Data and code for: How wage announcements affect job search - a field experiment

In a field experiment, we study how job seekers respond to posted wages by assigning wages randomly to pairs of otherwise similar vacancies in a large number of professions. Higher wages attract significantly more interest. Still, a non-trivial number of applicants only reveal an interest in the low wage vacancy. With a complementary survey, we show that external raters perceive higher wage jobs as more competitive. These findings qualitatively support core predictions of theories of directed/competitive search, though in the simplest calibrated model, applications react too strongly to the wage. We discuss extensions such as on-the-job search or partially directed search that rectify this.