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Implications of Public Sector Hiring Structures on Private Sector Labor Markets

Last registered on April 30, 2025
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Implications of Public Sector Hiring Structures on Private Sector Labor Markets
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0015860
Initial registration date
April 23, 2025

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
April 30, 2025, 9:05 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Name
Shruthi Ramesh
Affiliation
UC San Diego
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2025-04-15
End date
2026-06-30
Keywords
Labor
Additional Keywords
public sector recruitment, government jobs, India
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
Public sector jobs are highly sought after in developing countries, with candidates spending years unemployed to compete for them. In India, less than one percent of candidates who compete end up successful, which raises questions about the long-term labor market outcomes of those who don’t make the cut. Using a correspondence study with private sector employers on India’s biggest job platform, this study investigates whether exam preparation has costs in terms of private sector job opportunities for unsuccessful candidates. Findings from this study will highlight the differences in interview callbacks for candidates with a history of preparing for government exams, relative to candidates who have remained in the private sector since graduation. The study will also highlight if the scores in the government exam hold any signal value in the private sector, to inform policy recommendations on making the time spent on exam preparation useful outside of public sector recruitment drives.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Ramesh, Shruthi. 2025. "Implications of Public Sector Hiring Structures on Private Sector Labor Markets." AEA RCT Registry. April 30. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.15860-1.0
Sponsors & Partners

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Treatment resumes will belong to candidates with a history of government exam preparation after graduating college. The control group comprises candidates who worked in the private sector after graduating college.
Intervention Start Date
2025-04-28
Intervention End Date
2025-07-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Interview callback decisions
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The experiment design closely aligns with prior correspondence studies. The focus of the experiment is on the differential effects of staying unemployed to prepare for government exams relative to working in the private sector after graduation. The study will comprise three main experiments. The first experiment will highlight the differential callbacks received by candidates with a history of preparing for government exams and how the callbacks vary with each additional year spent on exam preparation. The second experiment will investigate whether the performance in government exams influences callback decisions. To this end, employers will receive resumes of candidates with varying scores in their most recent exam attempt. Finally, a third experiment will benchmark the differential callbacks received by government exam candidates against candidates with career breaks for other reasons. All other characteristics including the caste, gender, religion, school and college quality, academic grades, and extra-curricular activities will be held constant across all resume variants.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Resumes will be generated using code that will randomly assign candidate characteristics (government vs private sector choice after graduation, years since graduation, government exam score) to each variant.
Randomization Unit
Resume
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
2000 jobs per experiment
Sample size: planned number of observations
Experience experiment: 18000 resume-job pairs Score experiment: 12000 resume job pairs Benchmarking experiment: 8000 resume-job pairs
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
Experience experiment: 6000 resume-job pairs for government candidates, 12000 resume job pairs for private sector candidates
Score experiment: 2000 resume-job pairs for each score level
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
University of California San Diego
IRB Approval Date
2025-04-18
IRB Approval Number
812431
Analysis Plan