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Explaining the U-Shape of the Referral Hiring Pattern in a Search Model with Heterogeneous Workers

This paper presents a search model with heterogeneous workers, social networks and endogenous search intensity. There are three job search channels: costly formal applications and two costless informal channels – through family and professional networks. Our model explains a U-shape referral hiring pattern observed in empirical studies and a strong selection of workers on productivity across the three channels. Moreover, combining family and professional referrals into one informal channel may generate a spurious result of wage premiums (penalties) if high (low) productivity workers are dominating in the empirical data and their productivity is not fully observable to the econometrician.