The RFBerlin Applied Economics Seminar series brings leading researchers to Berlin to share their latest work and engage with our community. We are pleased to welcome Simon Jäger for this session, where he will share his work.
Simon Jäger is Associate Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University, jointly appointed by the Department of Economics and the School of Public and International Affairs. He is a member of Princeton’s Industrial Relations Section. Prof. Jäger is also member of the RFBerlin Network and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). His doctoral dissertation at Harvard received both the first prize of the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research and the David A. Wells Prize for the best dissertation in economics. His research focuses on the origins and consequences of labour market inequality.
Event Topic:
Job Ads as Signals: Evidence from a Priced Amenity and Worker Beliefs
Discrete choice experiments are widely used to estimate workers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for job amenities under the assumption that varying an attribute does not change workers’ beliefs about other job attributes. We test this assumption by embedding an amenity with a known market price—a popular monthly public transport pass—in a largescale discrete choice experiment with German workers. Many workers, including public transport users, overvalue the ticket by more than 100%, despite WTP for other attributes aligning with the literature. A complementary belief-elicitation experiment shows that advertising an amenity, such as the pass but also common amenities like work from home, causally shifts beliefs about unlisted attributes of the job. Posted wages similarly signal unlisted attributes so that wage variation, the money metric for WTP calculation, is itself contaminated by belief spillovers—such as higher pay signaling heightened stress. These spillovers imply that discrete choice estimates capture perceived bundles rather than isolated attributes, and distort current estimates of non-wage compensation and monopsony power.
Event Details:
Date: 6 October 2026
Time: 14:00–15:15
Participation: the seminar is open to the public and targeted to an academic audience.
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