The Role of Referrals in Immobility, Inequality, and Inefficiency in Labor Markets
研究了劳动力市场依赖推荐招聘的后果：推荐能筛选候选人、提高匹配质量和生产率，但使缺乏人脉的求职者处于劣势，加剧不平等；结合同质性，还导致低就业群体长期难以翻身。模型表明，更均匀分配推荐机会可减少不平等并提升未来生产率与流动性，并分析了平权政策的效果。
We study the consequences of job markets' heavy reliance on referrals. Referrals screen candidates and lead to better matches and increased productivity, but disadvantage job-seekers who have few or no connections to employed workers, leading to increased inequality. Coupled with homophily, referrals also lead to immobility: a demographic group's low current employment rate leads that group to have relatively low future employment as well. We identify conditions under which distributing referrals more evenly across a population not only reduces inequality, but also improves future productivity and economic mobility. We use the model to examine optimal policies, showing that one-time affirmative action policies involve short-run production losses, but lead to long-term improvements in equality, mobility, and productivity due to induced changes in future referrals. We also examine how the possibility of firing workers changes the effects of referrals.