In this paper, we study the role of coworker referrals for labor market outcomes. Using comprehensive Danish administrative data covering the period 1980 to 2005, we first document a strong tendency of workers to follow their former coworkers into the same establishments and provide evidence...

This paper addresses the puzzle how employers that invest in general human capital can gain an information advantage with respect to the ability of their employees when training is certified by credible external institutions. We apply an established model from the employer-learning literature...

This paper studies optimal taxation of income and education when employers cannot observe workers' productivity and workers signal their productivity to firms by choosing both quantity and quality of education. We characterize constrained efficient allocations and derive conditions under which...

The paper explains how a country can fall into a quot;low-skill, bad-job trap,quot; in which workers acquire insufficient training and firms provide insufficient skilled vacancies. In particular, the paper argues that in countries where a large proportion of the workforce is unskilled, firms...

Principal-agent models take outside options, determining participation and incentive constraints, as given. We construct a general equilibrium model where workers' reservation wages and the maximum punishment acceptable before workers quit are instead determined endogenously. We simultaneously...

This paper examines the effect of imperfect labor market competition on the efficiency of compensation schemes in a setting with moral hazard and risk-averse agents, who have private information on their productivity. Two vertically differentiated firms compete for agents by offering contracts...

The majority of U.S. temporary help supply firms (THS) offer nominally free, unrestricted computer skills training, a practice inconsistent with the competitive model of training. I propose and test a model in which firms offer general training to induce self-selection and perform screening of...

How does information asymmetry between firms regarding the quality (ability) of workers, determine the distribution of workers' qualities in those firms? We build a game theoretic model of information asymmetry between 2 representative firms competing in the labor market for labor inputs. In the...