Competitive on-the-job search

Pietro Garibaldi and Espen Moen ()

No 396, 2010 Meeting Papers from Society for Economic Dynamics

Abstract: The paper proposes a model of on- and off-the-job search that combines convex hiring costs and directed search. Firms permanently differ in productivity levels, their production function features constant or decreasing returns to scale, and search costs are convex in search intensity. Wages are determined in a competitive manner, as firms advertise wage contracts (expected discounted incomes) so as to balance wage costs and search costs (queue length). An important assumption is that a firm is able to sort out its coordination problems with their employees in such a way that the on-the-job search behavior of workers maximizes the match surplus. Our model has several interesting features. First, it is close in spirit to the competitive model, with a tractable and unique equilibrium, and is therefore useful for empirical testing. Second, the resulting equilibrium gives rise to an efficient allocation of resources. Third, the equilibrium is characterized by a job ladder: unemployed workers search for low-productivity, low-wage firms. Workers in low-wage firms search for firms slightly higher on the productivity/ ladder, and so forth up to the workers in the second most productive firms who only apply to the most productive firms. Finally, the model rationalizes empirical regularities of on-the-job search and labor turnover. First, job-to job mobility falls with average firm tenure and firm size. Second, wages increase with firm size, and wage growth is larger in fast-growing firms.

Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://red-files-public.s3.amazonaws.com/meetpapers/2010/paper_396.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Competitive On-the-job Search (2016)
Working Paper: Competitive on-the-job search (2014)
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:red:sed010:396

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2010 Meeting Papers from Society for Economic Dynamics Society for Economic Dynamics Marina Azzimonti Department of Economics Stonybrook University 10 Nicolls Road Stonybrook NY 11790 USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christian Zimmermann ().