Markets sometimes unravel, with offers becoming inefficiently early. Often this is attributedto competition arising from an imbalance of demand and supply, typically excess demand forworkers. However this presents a puzzle, since unraveling can only occur when firms are willingto make early...

We study a market in which both buyers and sellers can decide to preempt and set theirquantities before market clearing. Will this lead to preemption on both sides of the market,only one side of the market, or to no preemption at all? We …nd that preemption tends to beasymmetric in the sense...