The Assignment of Workers to Jobs in an Economy with Coordination Frictions.

This paper studies the assignment of heterogeneous workers to heterogeneous jobs. Owing to the anonymity of a large labor market, workers use mixed strategies when applying for jobs. This randomness generates coordination frictions. Two workers may apply for a particular job, whereas an identical jo...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:Journal of Political Economy Vol. 113; no. 5; pp. 996 - 1026
Autor principal: Shimer, Robert
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: University of Chicago Press October 2005
Materias:
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
Descripción
Sumario:This paper studies the assignment of heterogeneous workers to heterogeneous jobs. Owing to the anonymity of a large labor market, workers use mixed strategies when applying for jobs. This randomness generates coordination frictions. Two workers may apply for a particular job, whereas an identical job gets no applications. The model generates assortative matching, with a positive but imperfect correlation between matched workers' and firms' types. It predicts that a worker's wage is increasing in her job's productivity and a firm's profit is increasing in its employees' productivity. The model also yields a version of the welfare theorems. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.