TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Tekleselassie, Tsegay
AU  - Witte, Marc J.
AU  - Radbruch, Jonas
AU  - Hensel, Lukas
AU  - Isphording, Ingo E.
        TI  - Feedback, Confidence and Job Search Behavior
        PY  - 2025/Mar/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 17761
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp17761
        AB  - We conduct a field experiment with job seekers to investigate how feedback influences job search and labor market outcomes. Job seekers who receive feedback on their ability compared to other job seekers update their beliefs and increase their search effort. Specifically, initially underconfident individuals intensify their job search. In contrast, overconfident individuals do not adjust their behavior. Moreover, job seekers’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) for feedback predicts treatment effects: only among underconfident individuals with positive WTP, we observe significant increases in both search effort and search success. We present suggestive evidence that this pattern arises from heterogeneity in how job seekers perceive the relevance of relative cognitive ability to job search returns. While the intervention appears cost-effective, job seekers’ WTP remains insufficient to cover its costs.
        KW  - field experiment
KW  - job search
KW  - overconfidence
KW  - feedback
KW  - willingness-to-pay
        ER  -