A test between matching theories

Melvyn Coles and Barbara Petrongolo

No 175, Working Papers from Barcelona School of Economics

Abstract: This paper tests whether aggregate matching is consistent with random matching or stock-flow matching. Using U.K. matching data and correcting for temporal aggregation bias, estimates of the random matching function are consistent with previous work in this field. The data however support the "stock-flow" matching hypothesis. Estimates find that around 50% of newly unemployed workers match quickly. The remaining workers match slowly, their re-employment rates depending statistically on the inflow of new vacancies and not on the vacancy stock. The interpretation is that these latter workers, having failed to match with existing vacancies, wait for new, more suitable vacancies to come onto the market. The results have important policy implications, particularly for long term unemployment and the design of optimal unemployment insurance programs.

Keywords: random matching; Stock-flow matching; Job queues; Temporal aggregation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J3 J6 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-09
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://bw.bse.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/1175-file.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bge:wpaper:175

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Barcelona School of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bruno Guallar ().