We analyze the implications of multiple applications by job seekers for the microfoundations of the matching function. We emphasize a coordination failure caused by multiple applications, namely, that firms can waste resources processing applicants who are ultimately hired elsewhere.

This paper uses a simple model to explore the effects of 'increasing demand risk' on business fixed investment. We show that within a putty-clay framework an increase in demand uncertainty can be expected to have two countervailing effects. On the one hand increasing risk tends to induce a firm...

This paper examines the problem of nonexistence of equilibrium in a simple search model with asymmetric information. A pure-strategy, symmetric Nash equilibrium fails to exist because adverse selection arising from steady-state considerations causes a nonconcavity in the payoff function.

In this paper we extend models of "search market equilibrium" to incorporate general equilibrium considerations. The model we treat is one with a single product market and a single labor market. Imperfectly informed individuals follow optimal strategies in searching for a suitably low price and...

This paper develops a procedure for testing the signaling hypothesis as advanced by Spence, et. al. The approach used is to examine directly the question of whether employers use education for purely informational purposes in their hiring decisions. An application of the method to a recruitment...

This paper presents a technique for qualitative comparative statics analysis in dynamic programming models. Let the value function v be the fixed point of a contraction mapping which depends differentially on some exogenous parameter theta. Then the derivative of v with respect to theta exists...