Signals in two-sided search

Thesis

We introduce signals to search models of two-sided matching markets and explore the implications for efficiency. In a labour market model in which firms can advertise wages and workers can choose effort, we find that advertisements can help overcome the Diamond paradox. Advertisements fix workers' beliefs, so that workers will react if firms renege on advertisements. Firms then prefer to advertise truthfully. Next, we consider a market with two-sided heterogeneity in which types are only privately observable. We identify a simple condition on the match output function for agents to signal their types truthfully and for the matching to exhibit positive assortative matching despite search frictions. While our theoretical work implies that the efficiency of matching increases as information technology spreads, empirical matching functions typically suggest that it declines. By estimating more general matching functions, we show that the result of declining efficiency can partly be attributed to omitted variable bias.

Authors: Poeschel, F

• Publication date: 2011
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: signals; Diamond paradox; sorting; matching function; matching; search
• Subjects: Labour economics; Economics