Career Concerns and Career Choice ∗

In many industries workers face a choice between high and low visibility jobs. The former let all potential employers observe performance, the latter only the current employer. This paper argues that workers getting a positive initial signal about their talent are willing to incur costs to work in high visibility jobs in order to avoid a hold up problem with the current employer in the second period. We show that workers’ ability to choose jobs and to observe an initial signal about talent reverses predictions by standard models. In particular, (i) workers may exert less effort in high visibility jobs in a career concerns setup and (ii) firms may invest more in general human capital in more visible jobs.