This study aims at estimating the stigma effect of unemployment and overeducation within one framework. To this end, we conduct a field experiment in the Belgian labour market. We send out trios of fictitious male job applications to real vacancies. These applications differ only by the labour...

As skills of labor-market entrants are usually not directly observed by employers, individuals acquire skill signals. To study which signals are valued by employers, we simultaneously and independently randomize a broad range of skill signals on pairs of resumes of fictitious applicants among...

This paper discusses the claim made in Altonji and Pierret (1997) and Lange (2005) that a high speed of employer learning indicates a low value of job market signaling. The claim is first discussed intuitively in light of Spence's original model and then evaluated in a simple extension of a...

How can colleges find successful applicants? Criteria such as GPA, interviews, essays, and tests provide information about candidates, but which work and why? We shed light on these questions using unique data on the universe of objective and subjective rankings of all college applicants in...

Evidence of grade inflation in U.S. high schools is often misinterpreted due to confusion about how grade inflation is, or should be, defined. This note clarifies the implications of recent research on grade inflation in two ways. First, we situate the evidence by defining three distinct types...