Search theory routinely assumes that decisions about the acceptance/rejection of job offers (and, hence, about labor market movements between jobs or across employment states) are made by individuals acting in isolation. In reality, the vast majority of workers are somewhat tied to their partners - in couples and families - and decisions are made jointly. This paper studies, from a theoretical viewpoint, the joint job-search and location problem of a household formed by a couple (e.g., husband and wife) who perfectly pools income. The objective of the exercise, very much in the spirit of standard search theory, is to characterize the reservation wage behavior of the couple and compare it to the single-agent search model in order to understand the ramifications of partnerships for individual labor market outcomes and wage dynamics. We focus on two main cases. First, when couples are risk averse and pool income, joint search yields new opportunities - similar to on-the-job search - relative to the single-agent search. Second, when the two spouses in a couple face job offers from multiple locations and a cost of living apart, joint search features new frictions and can lead to significantly worse outcomes than single-agent search.
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Paper provided by Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis in its series Staff Report with number
426.
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.:
S. Rao Aiyagari & Jeremy Greenwood & Nezih Guner, 2000.
"On the State of the Union,"
Journal of Political Economy,
University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(2), pages 213-244, April.
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Kenneth Burdett & Dale T. Mortensen, 1977.
"Labor Supply Under Uncertainty,"
Discussion Papers
297, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
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