IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed012/631.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Interviews and the Assignment of Workers to Jobs

Author

Listed:
  • Ronald Wolthoff

    (University of Toronto)

  • Benjamin Lester

    (Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia)

Abstract

This paper studies the effect of screening costs on the equilibrium allocation of workers with different productivities to firms with different technologies. In the model, a worker's type is private information, but can be learned by the firm during a costly screening or interviewing process. We characterize the planner's problem in this environment and determine its solution. A firm may receive applications from workers with different productivities, but should in general not interview them all. Once a sufficiently good applicant has been found, the firm should instead make a hiring decision immediately. We show that the planner's solution can be decentralized if workers direct their search to contracts posted by firms. These contracts must include the wage that the firm promises to pay to a worker of a particular type, as well as a hiring policy which indicates which types of workers will be hired immediately, and which types will lead the firm to keep interviewing additional applicants.

Suggested Citation

  • Ronald Wolthoff & Benjamin Lester, 2012. "Interviews and the Assignment of Workers to Jobs," 2012 Meeting Papers 631, Society for Economic Dynamics.
  • Handle: RePEc:red:sed012:631
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://red-files-public.s3.amazonaws.com/meetpapers/2012/paper_631.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jan Eeckhout & Philipp Kircher, 2010. "Sorting and Decentralized Price Competition," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 78(2), pages 539-574, March.
    2. Becker, Gary S, 1973. "A Theory of Marriage: Part I," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(4), pages 813-846, July-Aug..
    3. Shouyong Shi, 2002. "A Directed Search Model of Inequality with Heterogeneous Skills and Skill-Biased Technology," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 69(2), pages 467-491.
    4. Shi, Shouyong, 2001. "Frictional Assignment. I. Efficiency," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 98(2), pages 232-260, June.
    5. Robert Shimer, 2005. "The Assignment of Workers to Jobs in an Economy with Coordination Frictions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(5), pages 996-1025, October.
    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. Cai, Xiaoming & Gautier, Pieter A. & Wolthoff, Ronald P., 2017. "Search frictions, competing mechanisms and optimal market segmentation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 453-473.
    2. Ronald Wolthoff, 2018. "Applications and Interviews: Firms’ Recruiting Decisions in a Frictional Labour Market," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 85(2), pages 1314-1351.
    3. Ronald Wolthoff & Pieter Gautier & Xiaoming Cai, 2016. "Inclusive versus Exclusive Markets:," 2016 Meeting Papers 262, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    4. Xiaoming Cai & Pieter Gautier & Ronald Wolthoff, 2015. "Inclusive versus Exclusive Markets: Search Frictions and Competing Mechanisms," Working Papers tecipa-545, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.

    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. Xiaoming Cai & Pieter Gautier & Ronald Wolthoff, 2021. "Search, Screening and Sorting," Working Papers tecipa-699, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    2. Huanxing Yang, 2020. "Targeted search, endogenous market segmentation, and wage inequality," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 69(2), pages 367-414, March.
    3. Cai, Xiaoming & Gautier, Pieter A. & Wolthoff, Ronald P., 2017. "Search frictions, competing mechanisms and optimal market segmentation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 453-473.
    4. Ronald Wolthoff & Benjamin Lester, 2016. "Interviews and the Assignment of Workers to Firms," 2016 Meeting Papers 221, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    5. Cheremukhin, Anton & Restrepo-Echavarria, Paulina & Tutino, Antonella, 2020. "Targeted search in matching markets," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 185(C).
    6. Jan Eeckhout & Philipp Kircher, 2010. "Sorting and Decentralized Price Competition," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 78(2), pages 539-574, March.
    7. Marcus Hagedorn & Tzuo Hann Law & Iourii Manovskii, 2017. "Identifying Equilibrium Models of Labor Market Sorting," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 85, pages 29-65, January.
    8. Davoodalhosseini, Seyed Mohammadreza, 2019. "Constrained efficiency with adverse selection and directed search," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 568-593.
    9. Shouyong Shi, 2005. "Frictional Assignment, Part II: Infinite Horizon and Inequality," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 8(1), pages 106-137, January.
    10. Lam, Wing Tung, 2020. "Inefficient sorting under output sharing," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).
    11. Leland D. Crane, 2014. "Firm Dynamics and Assortative Matching," Working Papers 14-25, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    12. Davoodalhosseini, Seyed Mohammadreza, 2022. "Optimal taxation in asset markets with adverse selection," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    13. Hector Chade & Jan Eeckhout & Lones Smith, 2017. "Sorting through Search and Matching Models in Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(2), pages 493-544, June.
    14. Cristian Bartolucci & Francesco Devicienti, 2012. "Better Workers Move to Better Firms: A Simple Test to Identify Sorting," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 259, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    15. Blázquez, Maite & Jansen, Marcel, 2008. "Search, mismatch and unemployment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(3), pages 498-526, April.
    16. Xu, Yujing & Yang, Huanxing, 2019. "Targeted search with horizontal differentiation in the marriage market," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 31-62.
    17. Mangin, Sephorah, 2017. "A theory of production, matching, and distribution," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 172(C), pages 376-409.
    18. Friedrich Poeschel, 2008. "Assortative matching through signals," Working Papers halshs-00585986, HAL.
    19. Leo Kaas & Philipp Kircher, 2015. "Efficient Firm Dynamics in a Frictional Labor Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(10), pages 3030-3060, October.
    20. Auster, Sarah & Gottardi, Piero, 2019. "Competing mechanisms in markets for lemons," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 14(3), July.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. Canadian Macro Study Group

    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:red:sed012:631. 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: Christian Zimmermann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sedddea.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.