The market for job placement: a model of headhunters

Etienne Campens () and Solenne Tanguy ()
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Etienne Campens: CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CEPREMAP - Centre pour la recherche économique et ses applications - ECO ENS-PSL - Département d'économie de l'ENS-PSL - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres
Solenne Tanguy: CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: This paper deals with the consequences of the existence of private employment agencies on the labor market. Using a matching framework, we study the conditions of existence of private employment agencies and the consequences of competition on the market for job placement. We show that the private employment agencies enter in the labour market only if they are much more efficient than the private agency. Moreover, the level of the unemployment benefits is a disincentive to manage workers for the private agency. Because of a high fallback position for the worker, it is costly for the private employment agency to manage a worker having some low probabilities to exit from unemployment. If these conditions are satisfied, the existence of private employment agencies improve the labor market through shorter unemployment spells and a lower unemployment rate. Moreover, an improvement in the matching process is an incentive for the firms to post vacancies at the private agencies. Nevertheless, the workers managed by the private agencies receive some lower wages than the other workers because of the payment by the firm for recruiting a worker. Finally, we show that private employment agencies have a natural disincentive to manage unskilled workers. But, the introduction of a subsidy to match an unskilled worker with a vacancy seems to be a sufficient incentive to make the private employment agencies managing unskilled workers.

Keywords: Unemployment; Matching model; Public employment agencies; Private employment agencies; Chômage; Modèle d’appariement; Services Publics de l’Emploi; Agences privées (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00113476
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Published in 2006

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-00113476

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