TY - JOUR
T1 - Employee recruiting and the Lake Wobegon effect
AU - Moran, John
AU - Morgan, John
N1 - Funding Information:
The second author gratefully acknowledges financial support from the National Science Foundation. We thank seminar participants at Penn State University and two anonymous referees for helpful suggestions.
Copyright:
Copyright 2008 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2003/2/1
Y1 - 2003/2/1
N2 - Employers, educational institutions, and other organizations are often faced with the problem of selecting the most qualified candidate to fill an available position. To this end, many employers have adopted a tournament-like procedure consisting of an initial phase in which third-party "referees" are used to eliminate unqualified candidates, followed by an interview phase in which the remaining candidates are ordinally ranked. We show that the unique equilibrium arising under this mechanism entails embellishment by both candidates and referees (a phenomenon known as the "Lake Wobegon effect"), but despite this, always results in the selection of the most qualified candidate.
AB - Employers, educational institutions, and other organizations are often faced with the problem of selecting the most qualified candidate to fill an available position. To this end, many employers have adopted a tournament-like procedure consisting of an initial phase in which third-party "referees" are used to eliminate unqualified candidates, followed by an interview phase in which the remaining candidates are ordinally ranked. We show that the unique equilibrium arising under this mechanism entails embellishment by both candidates and referees (a phenomenon known as the "Lake Wobegon effect"), but despite this, always results in the selection of the most qualified candidate.
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U2 - 10.1016/S0167-2681(02)00046-X
DO - 10.1016/S0167-2681(02)00046-X
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0037290047
VL - 50
SP - 165
EP - 182
JO - Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
JF - Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
SN - 0167-2681
IS - 2
ER -