IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/apl/wpaper/11-16.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Spence Revisited: Signaling and the Allocation of Individuals to Jobs

Author

Listed:
  • Timothy Perri

Abstract

Spence (1974a) considered a variant of his signaling model in which there are two types of jobs, and in which signaling can increase wealth by improving the allocation of individuals to jobs. Using results in signaling games since Spence’s work---the Riley outcome (Riley, 1979), the intuitive criterion (Cho and Kreps, 1987), and undefeated equilibrium (Mailath et al., 1993)---it is possible to be more precise than Spence was in determining when signaling would occur and what the effect of signaling on wealth would be. We find the likelihood of efficient signaling, inefficient signaling, and pooling equilibria depends on the fraction of more able individuals in the population. With non-trivial gains from job allocation, inefficient signaling does not appear to be the most likely outcome. Key Words: signaling, pooling, Riley outcome, intuitive criterion, and undefeated equilibrium

Suggested Citation

  • Timothy Perri, 2011. "Spence Revisited: Signaling and the Allocation of Individuals to Jobs," Working Papers 11-16, Department of Economics, Appalachian State University.
    • Handle: RePEc:apl:wpaper:11-16
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://econ.appstate.edu/RePEc/pdf/wp1116.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. In-Koo Cho & David M. Kreps, 1987. "Signaling Games and Stable Equilibria," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(2), pages 179-221.
    2. Mailath George J. & Okuno-Fujiwara Masahiro & Postlewaite Andrew, 1993. "Belief-Based Refinements in Signalling Games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 241-276, August.
    3. Rosen, Sherwin, 2007. "Studies in Labor Markets," National Bureau of Economic Research Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226726304, December.
    4. Michael Waldman, 1984. "Job Assignments, Signalling, and Efficiency," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 15(2), pages 255-267, Summer.
    5. Perri, T. J., 1995. "Testing for ability when job assignment is a signal," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 106-107, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Timothy Perri, 2013. "The More Abstract the Better? Raising Education Cost for the Less Able when Education is a Signal," Working Papers 13-08, Department of Economics, Appalachian State University.
    2. Timothy Perri, 2016. "Does signalling solve the lemons problem?," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(4), pages 227-229, March.
    3. Perri, Timothy, 2016. "Lemons & Loons," Review of Behavioral Economics, now publishers, vol. 3(2), pages 173-188, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Timothy Perri, 2013. "The More Abstract the Better? Raising Education Cost for the Less Able when Education is a Signal," Working Papers 13-08, Department of Economics, Appalachian State University.
    2. Waldman, Michael, 2016. "The dual avenues of labor market signaling," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 120-134.
    3. Perri, Timothy J., 2002. "Signaling versus contingent contracts with costly turnover," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 48(4), pages 365-374, August.
    4. Perri, Timothy, 2016. "Online education, signaling, and human capital," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 69-74.
    5. Ghosh, Suman, 2007. "Job mobility and careers in firms," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 603-621, June.
    6. Eduardo Perez-Richet, 2014. "Interim Bayesian Persuasion: First Steps," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(5), pages 469-474, May.
    7. Miguel Ángel Ropero, 2021. "Entry deterrence when the potential entrant is your competitor in a different market," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 87(3), pages 1010-1030, January.
    8. Dato, Simon & Grunewald, Andreas & Kräkel, Matthias & Müller, Daniel, 2016. "Asymmetric employer information, promotions, and the wage policy of firms," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 273-300.
    9. Richard Chisik, 2015. "Job market signalling, stereotype threat and counter-stereotypical behaviour," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 48(1), pages 155-188, February.
    10. Adriani, Fabrizio & Deidda, Luca G., 2009. "Price signaling and the strategic benefits of price rigidities," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 335-350, November.
    11. Anderlini Luca & Felli Leonardo & Postlewaite Andrew, 2011. "Should Courts Always Enforce What Contracting Parties Write?," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 7(1), pages 14-28, February.
    12. Krautheim, Sebastian & Verdier, Thierry, 2016. "Offshoring with endogenous NGO activism," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 22-41.
    13. Madison, Florian, 2019. "Frictional asset reallocation under adverse selection," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 115-130.
    14. Noldeka, G. & Samuelson, L., 1994. "Learning to Signal in Market," Working papers 9409, Wisconsin Madison - Social Systems.
    15. Bureau, J.-C. & Gozlan, E. & Marette, S., 1999. "Quality Signaling and International Trade in Food Products," Papers 99-13, Paris X - Nanterre, U.F.R. de Sc. Ec. Gest. Maths Infor..
    16. Janssen, Maarten, 2017. "Regulating False Discloure," VfS Annual Conference 2017 (Vienna): Alternative Structures for Money and Banking 168159, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    17. Itzhak Gilboa & Andrew Postlewaite & David Schmeidler, 2004. "Rationality of Belief Or: Why Savage's axioms are neither necessary nor sufficient for rationality, Second Version," PIER Working Paper Archive 07-001, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 03 Jan 2007.
    18. Ellingsen, Tore, 1997. "Price signals quality: The case of perfectly inelastic demand," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 43-61, November.
    19. Corneo, Giacomo & Jeanne, Olivier, 1998. "Social organization, status, and savings behavior," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 37-51, October.
    20. Federico Vaccari, 2023. "Influential news and policy-making," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 76(4), pages 1363-1418, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    signaling; pooling; riley outcome; intuitive criterion; and undefeated equilibrium;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:apl:wpaper:11-16. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: O. Ashton Morgan (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deappus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.