Employer Credit Checks: Poverty Traps Versus Matching Efficiency
研究雇主信用核查如何通过信号传递影响劳动力市场，发现它导致贫困陷阱，但禁止后虽消除陷阱却降低匹配效率，高生产率工人失业期增加2天，低生产率工人减少13天。
Abstract We develop a framework to understand pre-employment credit screening as a signal from credit markets that alleviates adverse selection in labour markets. In our theory, people differ in both their propensity to default on debt and the profits they create for firms that employ them; in our calibrated economy, highly productive workers have a low default probability. This leads firms to create more jobs for those with good credit, which creates a poverty trap: an unemployed worker with poor credit has a low job finding rate, but cannot improve her credit without a job. This manifests as an endogenous loss in present-discounted wages that is typically taken as exogenous in quantitative models of consumer default. Banning employer credit checks eliminates the poverty trap, but pools job seekers and reduces matching efficiency: average unemployment duration rises by 2 days for high productivity workers and falls by 13 days for low-productivity workers.