published as "On-the-job search, mismatch and efficiency" in: Review of Economic Studies, 2010, 77 (1), 245-272
We characterize the equilibrium of a search model with a continuum of job and worker types, wage bargaining, free entry of vacancies and on-the-job search. The decentralized economy with monopsonistic wage setting yields too many vacancies and hence too low unemployment compared to first best. This is due to a business-stealing externality. Raising workers' bargaining power resolves this inefficiency. Unemployment benefits are a second best alternative to this policy. We establish simple relations between the losses in production due to search frictions and wage differentials on the one hand and unemployment on the other hand. Both can be used for empirical testing.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.