Wage posting models of job search typically assume that firms can commit to paying workers the posted wage. This paper investigates the consequences of relaxing this assumption. Under ``downward'' commitment, 炉rms can commit only to paying at least their advertised wage. We show that wage posting is always an equilibrium, although in special cases other equilibria can exist. Surprisingly, the wage posting equilibrium in our economy is identical to the equilibrium when firms can commit to paying exactly their posted wage. When firms cannot even commit to paying at least their advertised wage, equilibrium exhibits job auctions with wage dispersion which generally is not constrained efficient.
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Paper provided by University of Adelaide, School of Economics in its series Working Papers with number
2008-01.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Benoit Julien & John Kennes & Ian King, 2000.
"Bidding for Labor,"
Review of Economic Dynamics,
Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 3(4), pages 619-649, October.
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Julien, B. & Kennes, J. & King, I., 1998.
"Bidding for Labour,"
Discussion Papers
dp98-03, Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University.