Public services can be, and are, delivered according to a variety of different arrangements. The public sector can finance and provide a service itself, or contract with the private sector to participate in provision, or its role may be limited to regulating a private provider. In this paper we...

Although a number of different models have been suggested for the process that brings workers and firms together in the labour market, none of these performs well in empirical studies of the aggregate matching function. Empirically, the most successful functional form is Cobb-Douglas, for which...

This paper analyses the contract-posting equilibrium in a general equilibrium matching model of the labour market with on-the-job turnover. Privately optimal contracts have a rising wage-tenure profile, even when productivity is constant. The effect is to reduce equilibrium turnover; when jobs...

Failure in the training market may result from credit constraints and the inability to insure against labour income uncertainty, deterring potential trainees, or labour market imperfections that create external benefits for firms. This paper constructs a model of a training market affected by...

To interpret estimates of empirical earnings functions, and to resolve sample selection problems such as tenure bias, the wage determination process must be specified. This paper shows that an earnings function can be interpreted as a wage offer in a labour market auction in which the worker...

A common assumption in equilibrium search and matching models of the labour market is that each firm posts a wage, to be paid to any worker hired. This paper considers the implications of firms posting contracts, in a random matching model with on-the-job search. More complex contracts enable...