  How does employer reputation affect the labor market? We investigate this
question using a novel dataset combining reviews from Glassdoor.com and job
applications data from Dice.com. Labor market institutions such as
Glassdoor.com crowd-sources information about employers to alleviate
information problems faced by workers when choosing an employer. Raw
crowd-sourced employer ratings are rounded when displayed to job seekers. By
exploiting the rounding threshold, we identify the causal impact of Glassdoor
ratings using a regression discontinuity framework. We document the effects of
such ratings on both the demand and supply sides of the labor market. We find
that displayed employer reputation affects an employer's ability to attract
workers, especially when the displayed rating is "sticky." Employers respond to
having a rating above the rounding threshold by posting more new positions and
re-activating more job postings. The effects are the strongest for private,
smaller, and less established firms, suggesting that online reputation is a
substitute for other types of reputation.
