TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Souder, Mael Astruc–Le
AU  - Bargain, Olivier B.
AU  - Locks, Gedeao
        TI  - A Question of Honor? The Labor Market  Advantage of Academic Signaling
        PY  - 2026/Apr/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 18567
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp18567
        AB  - As tertiary education expands, employers increasingly rely on academic distinctions to screen among similarly qualified graduates. We study the labor-market effects of honors using administrative and survey data on Sorbonne master’s graduates. We exploit France’s fixed GPA thresholds for honors assignment to implement a fuzzy regression discontinuity design. Returns are concentrated at the intermediate distinction (“High Honors”), indicating that credentials are most informative when they separate above- from below-average students. We find that High Honors accelerate school-to-work transitions, increasing the monthly job-finding rate by about 40%. Honors also generate an initial wage premium, which fades within two years, and lead to persistent improvements in job quality, including greater access to master’s-level positions and faster transitions to permanent contracts. These results highlight the role of academic distinctions as short-run signals that shape early career allocation rather than long-term earnings.
        KW  - signaling
KW  - honors
KW  - regression discontinuity design
KW  - fuzzy RDD
        ER  -