TY - BOOK AU - Pallais,Amanda AU - Sands,Emily Glassberg ED - National Bureau of Economic Research. TI - Why the Referential Treatment: Evidence from Field Experiments on Referrals T2 - NBER working paper series PY - 2015/// CY - Cambridge, Mass. PB - National Bureau of Economic Research N1 - July 2015; Hardcopy version available to institutional subscribers N2 - Referred workers are more likely than non-referred workers to be hired, all else equal. In three field experiments in an online labor market, we examine why. We find that referrals contain positive information about worker performance and persistence that is not contained in workers' observable characteristics. We also find that referrals performed particularly well when working directly with their referrers. However, we do not find evidence that referrals exert more effort because they believe their performance will affect their relationship with their referrer or their referrer's position at the firm UR - https://www.nber.org/papers/w21357 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w21357 ER -