published in: Games and Economic Behavior, 2008, 64 (1), 219-236
We analyze the Spence education game in experimental markets. We compare a signaling and a screening variant, and we analyze the effect of increasing the number of competing employers from two to three. In all treatments, more efficient workers invest more often in education and employers offer higher wages for workers who have invested. However, separation is incomplete, e.g., investment does not pay on average for efficient worker types. Increased competition leads to higher wages in the signaling sessions, not with screening. In the signaling version, we observe significantly more separating outcomes than in the screening version of the game.
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.