Stochastic Search Equilibrium

S-Tier
Journal: Review of Economic Studies
Year: 2013
Volume: 80
Issue: 4
Pages: 1545-1581

Score contribution per author:

4.022 = (α=2.01 / 2 authors) × 4.0x S-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

We study equilibrium wage and employment dynamics in a class of popular search models with wage posting, in the presence of aggregate productivity shocks. Firms offer and commit to (Markov) contracts, which specify a wage contingent on all payoff-relevant states, but must pay equally all of their workers, who have limited commitment and are free to quit at any time. We find sufficient conditions for the existence and uniqueness of a stochastic search equilibrium in such contracts, which is Rank Preserving [RP]: larger and more productive firms offer more generous contracts to their workers in all states of the world. On the RP equilibrium path, turnover is always efficient as workers always move from less to more productive firms. The resulting stochastic dynamics of firm size provide an intuitive explanation for the empirical finding that large employers have more cyclical job creation (<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="B29">Moscarini and Postel-Vinay, 2012</xref>). Finally, computation of RP equilibrium contracts is tractable. Copyright 2013, Oxford University Press.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:oup:restud:v:80:y:2013:i:4:p:1545-1581
Journal Field
General
Author Count
2
Added to Database
2026-01-26