This paper presents a test of the educational signaling hypothesis. If employers use education as a signal in the hiring process, they will rely more on education when less is otherwise known about applicants. We find that employers are more likely to lower educational standards when an...

In this paper, we show how time-varying unemployment benefits can generate equilibrium wage dispersion in an economy in which identical firms post wages and homogenous workers search for acceptable offers. We allow for matching frictions and for free entry and exit of vacancies, and we model...