With a little help from my friends? Quality of social networks, job finding and job match quality

Abstract

This paper studies the effect of network quality on job finding and job match quality using longitudinal data and a direct measure of network quality, which is based on the employment of friendship ties. Various identification strategies provide robust evidence that a higher number of employed contacts increases the job finding rate. Network quality also increases wages for high-skilled workers forming networks with non-familial contacts. Instead, for low-skilled workers, more employed familial contacts lead to a negative but not significant effect on wages. These findings reconcile previous mixed evidence of network effects on wages, indicating heterogeneity by skill level and relationship type.