Report of the economics Job Market Committee in the May AER

The Report of Ad Hoc Committee on the Job Market in the May 2011 AER (pp 744-6) has four sections:

I. Signaling;
"The number of participating job candidates held steady at roughly 1,000 signalers per year. About two-thirds of those in the job market signal each year."
...
"We note that at least a small number of ads in JOE this season solicit signals (e.g., “Candidates will be interviewed at ASSA (Denver) and are encouraged to use AEA signaling”).

II. Scramble;
"Survey results indicate that about half of the employers who register for the scramble initiate an interview as a result of the scramble. It is difficult to count the number of job placements initiated by the scramble. For the 2009–2010 job market, it appears that there were at least 15 job placements facilitated by the scramble."

III. Letters of Reference;
"The Committee is keeping an eye on the proliferation of websites to which letters of reference for new PhDs have to be uploaded, with many universities having their own sites."
...
"The Job Market Committee has considered whether the AEA ought to recommend a short list of application service providers and suggest that departments use one of just a few Internet portals, eschewing the unique url approach that is so costly. However, economics departments may not always be in a position to override their human resources departments, which seek other advantages by having all the jobs offered by their university handled on the same software. In this case it might be useful to press for common interfaces, so that centralized job market services that provide efficiencies to letter writers could upload letters to centralized university-specific services (many of which depend on only a small numberof software providers).

IV. Applications to Ph.D. programs
"There is a related issue not pertaining to the job market that affects a broader group of economics departments than just those that produce PhDs. It is the PhD admission process.
...
"The problem, even more than in the job market, is that the graduate school admission process usually is not under the control of the economics department. Often the platform and application apply to all PhD programs in the graduate school. The process stands in contrast to law schools and medical schools, which have centralized admissions forms and recommendation procedures. It is ironic that electronic processing of graduate school and job applications has increased the time required to apply and write letters in support of applicants."
***********

Here's our original report:
Peter Coles, John Cawley, Phillip B. Levine, Muriel Niederle, Alvin E. Roth, and John J. Siegfried , " The Job Market for New Economists: A Market Design Perspective," Journal of Economic Perspectives, 24,4 (Fall) 2010, 187-206.

"Likely letters" of admission and student athletes at Harvard

The Harvard Crimson describes one of the tools that Ivy League athletic coaches use to recruit student athletes. (The Ivy League faces some self-imposed restrictions, such as no athletic scholarships, that put it at a disadvantage compared to other schools when it comes to recruiting student athletes.)

For Some Athletes, An Early Notice
"In mid-October, when ambitious high school seniors are still anxiously toiling away at their Harvard College application, a select few already have received word of their likely acceptance.
...
"Every year, a group of approximately 200 recruited athletes are offered “likely letters” between Oct. 1 and March 15. While these letters technically do not guarantee an applicant admission to the College, admissions experts agree that a student who receives such a letter would only be denied admission in the most extreme circumstances.

“Barring a severe drop in grade, you can expect to get an offer,” said Penny Deck, an independent college counselor in Virginia.

"While the exact timeline for the recruiting process varies by sport, Harvard coaches say that they make their first contact the summer before a prospective athlete’s senior year of high school.

"From there, it is a hurried process where coaches evaluate a potential player in everything from athletic ability to character so that they can determine who they want to join their team.
...
"Beginning on Oct. 1, Harvard and its Ivy League counterparts can begin issuing likely letters to any of their applicants. While these letters are given to students for a variety of reasons, recruited athletes receive the majority early on in this period.

At Harvard and its Ivy peers, these letters are especially important.

Dave Galehouse, co-author of a guide for high school recruits titled “The Making of a Student Athlete”, said that Ivies are at a disadvantage because they do not offer special binding admissions decisions to student athletes.

According to Galehouse, the athletic programs at many other Division I institutions can essentially guarantee a student’s acceptance at their schools. He said he believes likely letters are a way to compensate for that disadvantage.

“It’s challenging for [Ivy League schools] because other schools can give notice earlier than we can,” said Ivy League Executive Director Robin Harris.


Since the elimination of early action*, Harvard has lost another tool to assure athletes—many of whom receive time-sensitive offers from other schools—that Harvard will admit them.

“Now that we don’t have our early action program, it’s very important to have likely letters,” said Harvard women’s volleyball coach Jennifer Weiss. “We’re still competing against schools that [do].”

“People are making decisions early. They can’t hold out a decision from Harvard until April,” said Weiss, the wrestling coach.

The Commitment Question

The Ivy League has minimal rules governing how its member institutions can utilize the likely letter, according to Harris. Still, the rules that exist are clear. While coaches may inquire as to a student’s level of interest, they cannot require a commitment or suggest that the applicant’s admission be contingent upon a commitment, according to the league’s website.

Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 said that Harvard not only follows the rule, but takes the principle one step further.


“We don’t really ask them or inquire [whether they plan on coming]. It’s not an issue,” he said. “To have a likely be binding would be antithetical to our admissions philosophy.”


"Despite acknowledging the Ivy League policy of not requiring a commitment, Galehouse said that coaches do gauge interest levels before submitting their preferences to the admissions office.


“If coaches are going to go to bat for you, they want a pretty strong commitment,” he said of his understanding of the process in the Ivies. “You’re not really supposed to be going after likely letters from multiple schools. Coaches talk.”


"Fitzsimmons acknowledged that few recruited athletes who receive likely letters from Harvard end up attending other institutions.

“A pretty high percentage of the athletes end up coming,” he said, adding that the trend can be attributed to a bond that recruits feel to the coach or the institution, not because Harvard requires any sort of commitment.

“It’s up to them whether they keep their applications in elsewhere,” Fitzsimmons said. “We’ve certainly had athletes who received likelies who end up not coming.”

*but see yesterday's post on the return of early admissions to Harvard

Early admission returns to Harvard and Princeton

The Crimson reports that Harvard cares about equilibrium:  Harvard Announces Return of Early Action Admissions Program

"Harvard College announced the return of its non-binding early action admissions program, which was eliminated in 2007 due to concerns that it posed a disadvantage to low-income applicants.

"The announcement comes after the University of Virginia—which, along with Princeton, followed Harvard in deciding to eliminate early admissions programs in the fall of 2006—rolled out a new early action program in November.

"University President Drew G. Faust said in a statement that the return of early action, an admissions practice which Harvard had previously called unfair to students from disadvantaged backgrounds, is now “consistent with our bedrock commitment to access, affordability, and excellence.”

"The program will return this fall for the class of 2016.

"Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Michael D. Smith said in the same statement that offering an accelerated decision cycle for interested applicants would increase Harvard’s potential to attract top-caliber students. He said, “We looked carefully at trends in Harvard admissions these past years and saw that many highly talented students, including some of the best-prepared low-income and underrepresented minority students, were choosing programs with an early-action option, and therefore were missing out on the opportunity to consider Harvard.”

*****************************

The NY Times picks up the story: Harvard and Princeton Restore Early Admission

"Harvard and Princeton each announced yesterday that they would revive their early-admission programs, allowing high school seniors who apply by next Nov. 15 to get a decision by Dec. 15 without having to promise to attend the college if admitted.

"In September 2006, when both universities decided to eliminate early admissions for those starting college in 2008, Harvard and Princeton said they wanted to start a trend that would help even the playing field between wealthy applicants and those who needed to compare financial-aid offers from different colleges. But only the University of Virginia followed their lead — and it announced last year that it would reinstate early admissions.

“In eliminating our early program four years ago, we hoped other colleges and universities would do the same, and they haven’t,” said Shirley M. Tilghman, Princeton’s president. “One consequence is that some students who really want to make their college decision as early as possible in their senior year apply to other schools early, even if their first choice is Princeton.”

Meanwhile, with the economic downturn, a growing number of applicants sought early admission, leading the universities who had abandoned their programs to lose out on some top students.

“The very people we were targeting, people from modest economic backgrounds, were sent into a high state of anxiety and uncertainty by the economy and it reached the point where, this past year, record numbers of people were applying early,” said William R. Fitzsimmons, Harvard’s dean of admissions. “At many high schools it was very common to have 60, 70, 80 percent of the students applying early, and we heard rumors that in some cases, it went up to 100 percent.”
...
"According to David Hawkins, director of public policy and research at the National Association for College Admission Counseling, about a quarter of four-year colleges offer early decisions, whether through nonbinding early action or binding early decision.

“Particularly at these institutions with these highly motivated students, the desire for some kind of early decision is not likely to abate,” Mr. Hawkins said. “There is anxiety around the college admissions process, and a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”

"Few colleges — Stanford and Yale among them — offer the kind of single-choice, nonbinding early-action program that Harvard and Princeton will use, in which students may apply early to only one college.

“A single-choice early-action plan lets students tell us we’re their first choice, so we get a start on building the class,” said Janet L. Rapelye, Princeton’s dean of admission. “At the same time, it allows them to apply to other schools, and for students who need a generous financial aid package, gives them freedom to compare, so it’s a win-win for them.”

**********

Note that "single choice early action" requires that a student apply to no more than one plan early, so it is a signaling device rather than (also) a binding commitment (as binding early decision plans are).

***********
The Globe picks up the story:

"Harvard professor Richard Zeckhauser, coauthor of the book “The Early Admissions Game,’’ said yesterday that the university was bound to back away from the abolition of early admissions when it became clear that competitors were not following suit.


“Having Harvard and Princeton get rid of early admissions and having our principal competitors retain it is the equivalent of unilateral disarmament,’’ Zeckhauser said. “There is too much of a disadvantage of being just one of two or three schools among the elite schools not to offer a program that all the other schools offer.’’

...
"In the past, students who applied early to Princeton and the University of Virginia were obligated to attend if admitted. Under their renewed early admissions programs, admitted students would no longer be bound to the universities.
"Yale and Stanford also have nonbinding early admissions programs. But early applicants admitted to Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth, Brown, and the University of Pennsylvania must promise to attend.

"Some college counselors welcomed Harvard’s and Princeton’s decisions, since more students are seeking early admissions options. Nearly a third of the senior class at Newton North High School had applied to a college by Nov. 1, said Brad MacGowan, a college counselor.
“With all the pressure and the uncertainty around college admissions, applying early gives them a little control,’’ said MacGowan. “They like the idea they can let a college know that it is their top choice.’’

Tribal customs of academic disciplines

Some of the different ways that different academic disciplines organize their scholarship, and the signals they send about it, are discussed in a recent column in the Chronicle of Higher Education about tenure reviews.

"A fair analysis of a tenure candidate requires that the committee members know (or learn) about the culture of the relevant academic discipline, particularly with respect to norms of publication numbers, venues, authorship order, conference presentations, invited talks, and student or postdoctoral advising.

"Considerable variation in those features exists across academe, even within science and engineering fields. Whereas one academic discipline might value short publications in highly selective conference proceedings over peer-reviewed journal articles, another requires peer-reviewed journal articles (in high-impact journals) as the primary indicator of productivity. Similarly, one discipline might alphabetize author order, another always has the "brains behind the project" as the last author, and another considers the first author listed to be the most important. Some fields expect assistant professors to have advised one or more Ph.D. students through to the completion of their degree, but in other fields that would be considered unusual."

The different customs of publication order present some opportunities in interdisciplinary collaborations of the kind that arise in market design, particularly since the authors publishing outside of their disciplinary journals are freed from the burden of sending signals.

Signaling (by candidates) and advertising (by employers) on the Economics job market

John Cawley has been carefully reading the ads in Job Openings for Economists, and he notices that advertisers have been taking explicit note of the signaling mechanism in the economics job market.

He notes:
"University College London writes in their JOE ad that: "We will pay particular attention to the applications of candidates who have signalled their interest in UCL through the AEA signalling system."

and the JOE ad for U Mass - Amherst states: Candidates will be interviewed at ASSA (Denver) and are encouraged to use AEA signaling.

(Here's a direct link to our recent paper:
The Job Market for New Economists: A Market Design Perspective, by Peter Coles, John Cawley, Phillip B. Levine, Muriel Niederle, Alvin E. Roth, and John J. Siegfried (Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 24, Number 4—Fall 2010—Pages 187–206) )

The Job Market for New Economists: timely JEP article

The JEP has just published our report on various "new" features of the job market for new Ph.D. economists, including the signaling mechanism and the scramble.

The Job Market for New Economists: A Market Design Perspective, by Peter Coles, John Cawley, Phillip B. Levine, Muriel Niederle, Alvin E. Roth, and John J. Siegfried (Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 24, Number 4—Fall 2010—Pages 187–206)

Is the law clerk hiring regime on its last legs?

That's the question asked by an Oct 18 article in the National Law Journal. Clerkship scramble: The system for placing them with federal judges is breaking down by Karen Sloan. The article notes both that many judges are hiring law students as clerks earlier than the current guidelines allow, and also, interestingly, that an increasing number of judges are essentially hiring later, by hiring law grads rather than current law students.

"Are the Wild West days of federal clerk hiring back? That's what some law school administrators and judges fear. They worry that the voluntary system whereby federal judges wait until September of the 3L year to hire clerks is teetering. Judges are choosing clerks earlier in the year and are being inundated with applications as the legal job market narrows. And a trend toward hiring the already graduated means fewer positions are available for fresh law graduates.


"There has been a definite strain on the system over the past couple of years," said Sheila Driscoll, director of judicial clerkships at George Washington University Law School and the chairwoman of the National Association for Law Placement's (NALP) judicial clerkship section. "People are really worried that it's not going to last."

"Before 2003, judges hired clerks as early as they pleased. That's when two appellate judges persuaded most of their peers to agree to a voluntary plan that pushed federal clerk hiring back from the 2L year to September of the 3L year.


"The reform has outlasted many previous attempts to make the process orderly and fair, but the prevailing sense among placement officers and even judges is that more judges are jumping the gun. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts doesn't track which judges hire before September, but plenty of anecdotal evidence suggests that judges are picking clerks during the summer and earlier, leaving applicants to wonder about the fairness and transparency of the process. "
...
"Certain circuits openly acknowledge that most of their judges don't follow the plan — most notably the 4th, 5th, 10th and 11th circuits. The judges on the 4th Circuit voted several years ago to bypass the hiring plan altogether, said Chief Judge William Traxler Jr. "There was a long discussion and a division of opinion, but the majority did not want to go along with it," he said.


"One clerkship adviser at a top law school said that many judges are openly advertising their desire to receive applications as soon as 2L grades are available — a change from years past, when judges would solicit early applications less brazenly. The adviser did not want to be identified by name because the situation is delicate for law school administrators trying to give their students the best chance to land clerkships while still adhering to the official time line. Students, meanwhile, have to do more legwork to find out which judges are hiring and when.
...
"The hiring plan received a boost in 2005 with the introduction of the Online System for Clerkship Application and Review (OSCAR), which allows applicants and law schools to submit materials online and lets judges sort applications by specific criteria, such as school or grade-point average. The system will not release student applications to judges until the September kickoff date, which helps encourage compliance. Judge participation has climbed steadily since OSCAR's introduction, but there is no guarantee that judges who advertise positions on OSCAR will wait until September to make decisions.


"You can have a judge who only uses OSCAR for purposes of posting clerkship opportunities, but doesn't adhere to the schedule," said Judge Nicholas Garaufis, who sits on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York and chairs the judiciary's OSCAR working group. "That judge can reach out to applicants who send papers in the mail at any point."

"The frenzy places judges not in preferred cities on the East or West coasts in a tough spot — it's harder for students to make it to their chambers during the whirlwind interview period.

"Quite frankly, we just saw that other areas of the country were not following the plan," said Chief Judge Mary Beck Briscoe of the 10th Circuit. "By the time students would come out to the Midwest for interviews, the candidates with the highest credentials had already been hired."

"Briscoe recalled one candidate two years ago who was hired by another judge while literally in transit to an interview with her in Lawrence, Kan.

"The declining legal job market and the ease of applying with multiple judges through OSCAR have resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of applications. In 2009, OSCAR funneled 401,576 applications to judges — a 324% increase from the 94,693 applications received in 2005.

"With so many applications coming in, some law school career counselors and students worry that connections are playing an even bigger role in the process, as judges look for ways to cut through hundreds or even thousands of applicants. One judge in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania received 1,900 applications, said Melissa Lennon, assistant dean for career planning at Temple University James E. Beasley School of Law. "What is going to cut through 1,900 applications? Nothing but a phone call," she said.
...
"Another factor is that the rules don't cover applications from people who have already graduated — judges may hire them at any point. That's a real incentive to hire alumni instead of law students, according to judges and law school administrators. "I think some judges don't like the hiring frenzy that takes place on the first day they can interview 3Ls under the rules," said New York University School of Law Dean Richard Revesz. "A way to avoid that and still comply with the rules is to hire alumni."


"Plenty of judges are going that route. Although federal court administrators don't track the percentage of alumni and law student clerk hires, OSCAR data show that clerkship applications from alumni eclipsed those from law students in 2009 — a first.

"Harvard University clerkship adviser Kirsten Solberg said approximately one-third of Harvard's federal and state clerks are alumni. The shift has been rapid at Temple, where alumni make up about 40% of the school's clerks, compared to about 25% the previous year, Lennon said. "

My previous posts on the judicial clerk market are here. My papers on that market are here.

College admissions through the common ap, and supplements as signals

The Common Application makes it easy to apply to one more college. So colleges that use it get an increase in applications, some of which may not reflect much real interest. And so many colleges are adding supplements to the Common Ap, so that students will have to exert some effort to apply to them.

The Chronicle of Higher Ed writes of The Gravitational Pull of the Common Application (may need a subscription).

"Fall is here, and another harvest of college applications has begun. Over the next few months, hundreds of thousands of high-school seniors will apply to college through the popular portal known as the Common Application, a standardized form used by an ever-growing list of institutions.


"Now in its 35th year, the Common Application began as a small membership association of 15 private colleges. Today, more than 400 institutions use the form, which many admissions deans say has helped them recruit more first-generation and minority students. Recently, the nonprofit group welcomed its first two international members....
"Two years ago, the University of Chicago, long known for its distinctive Uncommon Application, joined the party after years of principled objections. This year, Columbia University hopped onboard, becoming the last member of the Ivy League to do so.


"In this era of hyper-competitive admissions, how can any college resist the Common Application’s gravitational pull?


"Recently, I put this question to Charles A. Deacon, dean of admissions at Georgetown University, among the most-prominent institutions that have not adopted the application (nobody should hold their breath waiting for that to change). Mr. Deacon describes the application as both an unnecessary tool and an unwelcome symbol of homogenization in admissions.

"The Common Application was created to promote equity in admissions by making it easier for students to apply to colleges that conduct “holistic” reviews of applicants. Mr. Deacon applauds that goal, but he says the standardized application prompts students to apply to colleges in which they have little or no interest. ...

"This year, Georgetown received about 18,000 applications for a freshman class of 1,580. Mr. Deacon suspects that adopting the Common Application would bring Georgetown 3,000 to 5,000 additional applicants in the first year or two. But he says the university doesn’t need that many—and that it already attracts plenty of diverse applicants through its traditional recruitment strategies.

...
"Mr. Deacon’s not the only critic of the Common Application. In some circles, the form has become a scapegoat for a variety of ills—frivolous applications, stressed-out students, overwhelmed admissions deans. At a conference for private high-school counselors I attended this summer, the consensus was that the Little Application That Could had become a big, big problem.


"Curiously, their objections differ. Some counselors say the form has made applying to college too easy, but others say that by requiring supplements, some participating colleges have made it too hard.
...
"...participating colleges embrace the Common Application in different ways. About two-thirds require applicants to complete supplements. The majority of those supplements, Mr. Killion says, are short, with one or two pages of questions. A few dozen have longer supplements, with additional essay questions (Chicago, for instance, still requires applicants to respond to its quirky prompts, like “Find X”).


"Mr. Killion notes that some institutions have had supplements from the Common Application’s inception. Where the concern is coming from, he says, “is really from people looking at a narrow band of very highly selective colleges with long supplements.”
...
"“We don’t exist to help colleges increase their applications, but it’s a side effect of what we do,” Mr. Killion says.


"Brown University saw a 21-percent jump in 2009, the year it switched to the Common Application. In 2008, it had a 7.7-percent increase. Chicago saw a 43-percent increase in applications this year, the second since it switched, but it had seen an increase of 20 percent just a few years ago. Columbia saw a 13-percent increase in 2009. What will it see during this cycle?
...
"At Georgetown, Mr. Deacon says joining the Common Application has become a keeping-up-with-the-Joneses phenomenon. He concedes that his opinion has been shaped, in part, by Georgetown’s enviable position in the marketplace. As a well-known institution with ample resources in the nation’s capital, it benefits from built-in demand. If the university’s applications dipped sharply, he admits, he would feel pressure to get more.


"That’s not likely to happen, despite Mr. Deacon’s relatively conservative approach to admissions. Each year, Georgetown begins its recruitment process by purchasing the names of PSAT test takers with equivalent scores of at least 650 on the critical reading section, 620 on the math section, and self-reported grade-point averages of A- or better. Last year, that was about 44,000 students, Mr. Deacon says. The university also buys another 5,000 to 6,000 names of underrepresented minority students with lower scores.

"Georgetown invites all those students to join its mailing list, and 12,000 to 13,000 of those students typically respond. The admissions staff supplements this search with a host of outreach, including travel to 140 cities and towns each year, and “pipeline” building in far-flung areas.

"Unlike most colleges, Georgetown strongly recommends that applicants submit scores from three SAT Subject Tests. The university also urges students to sit for interviews, and the vast majority of applicants do so. In other words, applying to Georgetown takes commitment."

The market for boasting

How did people boast signal before they had blogs?

Not long ago I was the subject of a flattering profile in Forbes (which I wrote about in this earlier blog boast post).
Yesterday I received a letter in the mail from a company that "specializes in turning articles into custom designed plaques."

It's not a bad idea, and if I were a restaurant, I'd buy one right away, and post it next to the menu, preferably where it could be read from the street.

Signaling preferences in matching markets

Preference Signaling in Matching Markets, by Peter Coles, Alexey Kushnir, and Muriel Niederle, NBER Working Paper No. 16185, July 2010. (Here's an ungated version.)

"Abstract: Many labor markets share three stylized facts: employers cannot give full attention to all candidates, candidates are ready to provide information about their preferences for particular employers, and employers value and are prepared to act on this information. In this paper we study how a signaling mechanism, where each worker can send a signal of interest to one employer, facilitates matches in such markets. We find that introducing a signaling mechanism increases the welfare of workers and the number of matches, while the change in firm welfare is ambiguous. A signaling mechanism adds the most value for balanced markets."

Two of the three authors of this paper are on the AEA job market committee that instituted the AEA's job market signaling mechanism. This new working paper brings some theory to the party.

See also

Peter Coles, John Cawley, Phillip B. Levine, Muriel Niederle, Alvin E. Roth, and John J. Siegfried , " The Job Market for New Economists: A Market Design Perspective," revised April 6, 2010, forthcoming in Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2010.

Grade inflation in law schools

The NY Times report that some law schools are retroactively raising the grades they have given to their students, in an effort to improve their prospects in the difficult market for many law grads: In Law Schools, Grades Go Up, Just Like That.

"[Loyola Law School in Los Angeles] is retroactively inflating its grades, tacking on 0.333 to every grade recorded in the last few years. The goal is to make its students look more attractive in a competitive job market.
In the last two years, at least 10 law schools have deliberately changed their grading systems to make them more lenient. These include law schools like New York University and Georgetown, as well as Golden Gate University and Tulane University, which just announced the change this month. Some recruiters at law firms keep track of these changes and consider them when interviewing, and some do not.
Law schools seem to view higher grades as one way to rescue their students from the tough economic climate — and perhaps more to the point, to protect their own reputations and rankings. Once able to practically guarantee gainful employment to thousands of students every year, the schools are now fielding complaints from more and more unemployed graduates, frequently drowning in student debt.
They have come up with a number of strategic responses. Besides the usual career counseling measures, many top schools have bumped up their on-campus interview weeks from the autumn to August, before the school year even starts, because they want their students to have a chance to nab a job slot before their counterparts at other schools do. "
...
"Harvard and Stanford, two of the top-ranked law schools, recently eliminated traditional grading altogether. Like Yale and the University of California, Berkeley, they now use a modified pass/fail system, reducing the pressure that law schools are notorious for. This new grading system also makes it harder for employers to distinguish the wheat from the chaff, which means more students can get a shot at a competitive interview. "


For a paper on grade inflation and job markets, see

Michael Ostrovsky and Michael Schwarz, 2010, "Information Disclosure and Unraveling in Matching Markets." American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 2(2): 34–63.

It's behind a subscription wall, but here's the abstract:

"This paper explores information disclosure in matching markets. A school may suppress some information about students in order to improve their average job placement. We consider a setting with many schools, students, and jobs, and show that if early contracting is impossible, the same, "balanced" amount of information is disclosed in essentially all equilibria. When early contracting is allowed and information arrives gradually, if schools disclose the balanced amount of information, students and employers will not find it profitable to contract early. If they disclose more, some students and employers will prefer to sign contracts before all information is revealed."

Signaling you're not 'overqualified' in a recession

The Globe reports on Deflating credentials to land a job.

"As the tight job market forces the unemployed to apply for lower-level positions, more job seekers are “dumbing down’’ credentials, wiping graduate degrees and high-level experience off their resumes, recruiters say. Applicants say the idea is to get hiring managers to at least look at their resumes, instead of figuring someone with extra qualifications will demand a bigger salary or leave for a higher-level opportunity once the economy turns around."

...

“Somebody finds out you know that much more than they do, they get nervous,’’ Carroll said.

"That’s true, says Robert Akerlof, a post-doctoral associate at the MIT Sloan School of Management, who is working on a theory about how it can be difficult to maintain authority over overqualified workers if they think a job, or a boss, is beneath them.

"Dumbing down a resume is a way for job seekers to show that they are going to be respectful, said Akerlof, citing the “20 percent rule,’’ which states that bosses should be 20 percent smarter than their employees.

“I think it’s not so much that you’re lying about what your resume is, it’s that you’re trying to convey an appropriate attitude,’’ he said."

College admissions and "demonstrated interest"

Signaling is important, says a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed: The Dynamics of Demonstrated Interest

"This year, American University received a record 17,000 admissions applications, a 13 percent increase over last year.

.... as colleges become more selective, they often find themselves competing with institutions a rung or two higher on the ladders of selectivity and desirability, at least for the top students.

Although there's prestige in this kind of association, there's also uncertainty. How many applicants would turn down a super-selective, big-name college to attend a somewhat less-selective, less-famous one? How do you know whether a student considers your college a top choice or a "safety school"? How does an applicant's sense of "fit" with a college relate not only to matriculation, but also retention?

"In recent years, such questions have prompted American's admissions team to look more closely at "demonstrated interest," the popular term for the contact students make with a college during the application process, such as by visiting the campus, participating in an interview, or e-mailing an admissions representative. In theory, it's a way to measure the likelihood that an applicant will matriculate—and succeed if they do.

"The practice is not new, but its importance has grown at some selective colleges in this era of ballooning applications and economic uncertainty. From 2003 to 2006, the percentage of colleges rating demonstrated interest as a "considerably important" factor increased to 21 percent from 7 percent, according to an annual survey by the National Association for College Admission Counseling. Since then, that number has held steady (another 27 percent of colleges now deem it "moderately important"). ...

"Recently, American has created more opportunities for students to do just that. The admissions office has broadened its recruitment strategies to include online chats for prospective applicants. Participation is noted in each student's file. ...

"Demonstrated interest often dovetails with another strategy for managing uncertainty: the waiting list. This year, American offered a spot on its waiting list to about 2,000 students, a seemingly large number considering that the university had accepted approximately 7,300 students for its freshman enrollment target of 1,450.

"Applicants who received waiting-list invitations from American fit a range of descriptions. Some were less competitive than the applicants the university accepted, but others were top-notch students who did not seem like a good fit for the university. In some cases, the reason was a lack of demonstrated interest, Ms. Alston says."

Subscription dating sites: matching versus recruiting

The proprieters of the (apparently no-fee) online dating site OKCupid have a blog in which they analyze their copious data in interesting ways. A recent entry analyzes the business plans of their bigger competitors: Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating

They argue that the number of members advertised by eHarmony and Match.com is very much larger than the number of their paying subscribers, with the result that most messages are sent to non-subscribers (who they hope will be enticed to subscribe in order to answer). This contributes, they argue, to a death spiral in which men (who send the most messages) find that most of their messages go unanswered, so they increase the number of people they message to, which makes the messages more formulaic, which decreases the response rate (because women are inundated with many impersonal messages from less than likely matches), etc.

Makes you think some kind of scarce-resource signaling would be useful, doesn't it?

Harvard's mysterious Z-list

One of the more unusual routes to admission at Harvard is the Z-list, which the Crimson writes about this week. Z-Listed Students Experience Year Off: Undergrads take mandatory gap year before coming to Harvard

Last year I wrote about it here: Harvard's "Z-list," waitlist admission with a difference .

It's that mandatory year off that makes the Z-list unusual (students who enter from the Z-list must delay a year and can't attend another school while they wait).

The mystery is to whom this admissions option is offered, and who chooses to accept. There's some signaling going on here, and some sorting.

Signaling and hiring: one law recruiter's opinion

From the Faculty Lounge: Tim Zinnecker writes

"Speaking solely for myself (and not fellow committee members or my law school institution), I hope we place a greater burden on candidates to prove a genuine interest in relocating, before we start the courtship. It can be frustrating (not only for law schools, but for other candidates who get "bumped") when, after the time and expense of a flyback, a candidate declines, citing "spousal relocation phobia." Some candidates disclose geographic restrictions on the FAR forms. Thank you. Some candidates decline the flyback, citing geographic concerns. Thank you (although why did you accept the screening interview?). But candidates who accept the flyback, receive an offer, and then disclose that the spouse won't relocate? Very frustrating."

The signaling deadline for the economics job market is midnight tonight

A quarter of new Ph.D.s who failed to signal last year reported that it was because they missed the deadline. The deadline is midnight tonight.

You can register and select your signals here. If you're on the job market, send your signals now.

(You probably don't want to send them to a department ranked higher than the one you are graduating from, and you might want to send them to departments that you don't think will get too many signals. See the Coles et al. paper for the data.)

good luck to all.

The signaling deadline for the econ job market is tomorrow, Tuesday, at midnight

If you are an economist on the jobmarket, planning to be interviewed at the ASSA meetings in January, and if you haven't submitted your two signals yet, now is the time. You can register and select your signals here.

(For everyone else, here is a description of signaling, it's a process by which job candidates can have the American Economic Association send an indication of particular interest to two potential employers out of the many they have sent applications to. The idea is that a limit to two special signals helps employers sort through the many applications they receive when it is time to decide who to interview at the national meetings in January.)

The deadline is tomorrow, Tuesday, at midnight (2400 EST).

The December JOE is out, so there won't be any new job listings before tomorrow.

Now is the time to chat with your advisor, and send your two signals. (It can't hurt and might help, see the paper linked to in yesterday's post.)

The job market for new economists: preliminary report

I chair the AEA ad hoc committee on the job market, and a preliminary version of a report we're writing may be of interest to those on the job market this year (and in particular to those who should be signaling by the end of the day Tuesday). The bottom line for the moment? Don't forget to signal.

The paper is
Peter Coles, John Cawley, Phillip B. Levine, Muriel Niederle, Alvin E. Roth, and John J. Siegfried , " The Job Market for New Economists: A Market Design Perspective," preliminary draft, Nov. 25 2009.
A link to it (which will be updated as the paper proceeds towards completion) is on my market design page here.

Signaling for interviews in the Economics Job Market: Registration opens tomorrow

Here is the American Economic Association's announcement of the 2009 mechanism for Signaling for Interviews in the Economics Job Market

"The AEA coordinates a mechanism through which applicants can signal their interest in receiving an interview at the January meetings. From November 16, until December 1, shortly after the December JOE comes out, each applicant on the economics job market can register and designate no more than two departments (or other employers) to whom to send a signal of particular interest. On December 3, the AEA will transmit these signals to the departments a candidate has chosen. (Signals will not be made public.)

Please see Signaling for Interviews in the Economics Job Market for a detailed description as well as the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. "

Those already registered may select or update signals until Midnight, EST on December 1, 2009. This is a firm deadline.

In each of the years when signaling has been available (2006-9), about 1,000 signalers have used the system (almost all choosing to send 2 signals). Around 25% of JOE listings have received at least one signal in each of those years. So signaling has been pretty widespread, with lots of senders and receivers.

So, that said, should you signal? Or perhaps there's some reason not to signal?

In a December 2008 survey of those appearing on departmental lists of job candidates, 66% of respondents reported signaling. Of the remaining 33% of respondents, 26% reported that they missed the deadline, 21% reported they didn’t know about the mechanism, 41% thought signaling wouldn’t help their chances of getting a job, and 5% thought signaling would hurt their chances of getting an interview.

On this last point I can offer some reassurance; in our surveys of department recruiting committees, there is no indication whatsoever that anyone regards a signal as a negative indicator in deciding whether to offer an interview.

There is also some indication that signals help, at least sometimes (again from survey data, since we don't have direct access to data on who gets interviews), particularly for signals sent to employers who don't receive an excessive number of signals. (The 21 employers receiving the most signals received about 1/6 of all signals: ten of these employers are in the Boston, NY, and D.C. metropolitan areas.) Overall, a signal seems to increase the likelihood of an interview by around 6 percentage points.

I think it is sensible for most candidates to send the two signals they are allotted. I think the most you can expect a signal to do is to cause someone at the signaled department to take one more look at your dossier, and consider whether it makes sense to include you on their already pretty full schedule of interviews, given your interest. So, choose your signals with that in mind, and they may work for you.

(I hope to have a paper ready for circulation reasonably soon, with my colleagues on the AEA job market committee...)