Pure-Chance Jobs versus a Labor Market: The Impact on Careers of a Random Serial Dictatorship for First Job Seekers

摘要

Does a worker's first job affect her long-run career trajectory? This depends on defining characteristics of the labor market she enters into. Do such first-job effects vary across workers of different types? This in turn determines the scope for policy to affect the aggregate realized effects of workers' first jobs by altering initial matches between workers and employers. Do policy options that would improve upon a normal, "free" labor market actually exist? This depends on how well decentralized labor markets function relative to feasible alternatives, such as the centralized assignment mechanisms used in the public sector in many countries or the coordinated job market for academic economists.