This paper investigates a learning model in which information about a worker's ability, unobserved to both the worker and the firm, can be acquired in any period by both parties by observing the worker's performance at a given task. Tasks are differentially informative about productivity: more...

This paper introduces risk averse workers into a search and matching model and considers the quantitative performance of the model over the business cycle. Wages are determined by long term contracts between workers and firms, with firms providing insurance to workers against variation in labor...

This paper develops and structurally estimates a learning model in which firms acquire information about workers' ability by observing their performance over time. A firm consists of a collection of jobs which differ in the informational content of performance, as measured by the dispersion in...