Investing in Skill and Searching for Coworkers: Endogenous Participation in a Matching Market

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bidner, Chris; Roger, Guillaume; Moses, Jessica
• 署名单位: Simon Fraser University; University of Sydney; Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MICROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7669
• DOI: 10.1257/mic.20140110
• 发表日期: 2016
• 页码: 166-202
• 关键词: premarital investments; marriage; education; incentives; hazard; job

摘要

We demonstrate how search frictions have important yet subtle implications for participation in a skilled labor market by studying a model in which agents invest in skill prior to searching for coworkers. Search frictions induce the existence of acceptance-constrained equilibria, whereby matching concerns-as opposed to investment costs-dissuade the marginal agent from investing and participating in the skilled matching market. Such equilibria are robust, relevant, and have comparative static properties that contrast sharply with the intuitive properties arising in a benchmark static setting. We consider an extension with separate matching marketplaces, and show that our main results continue to hold.