Alberto Marcato (USI Lugano)
Fabrizio Colella and Rafael Lalive
This paper studies the effects of a Job Vacancy Notice Obligation (JVNO) policy, which aims to support resident job seekers in high unemployment occupations in Switzerland. Specifically, this policy mandates firms that want to hire in these occupations to post vacancies on a designated online local platform and prohibits them from advertising the vacancy elsewhere for five days. Adopting a regression-discontinuity design (RDD) which contrasts occupations on either side of the unemployment threshold, we find a significant increase in the number of vacancies posted as well as of posting firms for treated occupations. These effects are stronger for smaller firms and for firms that have never posted online before the policy was introduced. We also find significant positive increases in employment, the effect is strong for immigrant workers. Overall, the JVNO policy exhibits substantial positive effects on match efficiency, suggesting that increased posting is not just due to firms switching from informal hiring to posting jobs online.