Learning by searching: Spatial mismatches and imperfect information in Southern labor markets
通过实地实验发现，降低交通补贴等搜索成本能促使求职者更积极搜索并调整预期，但若附近工作稀缺，最终未必提高就业率，揭示了搜索成本与信念的复杂互动。
Youth unemployment remains extremely high throughout the developing world, at times coexisting with unmet demand for labor and high job turnover. We examine one possible explanation for this: spatial mismatches between jobs and job-seekers combined with high search costs can lead young job-seekers to have overly optimistic beliefs about their employment prospects. As a result, job-seekers under-search but also hold out for better jobs. Through a field experiment we find that reducing search costs through transport subsidies leads job-seekers to search more intensively and to adjust their beliefs in line with their search experience. When jobs fail to materialize immediately, job-seekers who believed that dropping CVs at prospective employers in the city centre was an effective search strategy become more impatient, they lower their reservation wage and they settle for low-paying jobs closer to home. This does not increase their likelihood of being employed, since nearby jobs are also scarce. These findings underscore both the importance and the complexity of the interaction between search costs and beliefs, and how they can lead to spatial and occupational mistargeting in the job search.