Competitive Wages in a Match with Ordered Contracts

S-Tier
Journal: American Economic Review
Year: 2007
Volume: 97
Issue: 5
Pages: 1957-1969

Score contribution per author:

8.043 = (α=2.01 / 1 authors) × 4.0x S-tier

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

Abstract

Following the recently dismissed antitrust lawsuit against the National Residency Matching Program (NRMP), Jeremy Bulow and Jonathan Levin (2006) propose a simple matching model in which firms set impersonal salaries simultaneously before matching with workers, which leads to lower aggregate wages than any competitive outcome. I model a feature of the NRMP, ordered contracts, that allows firms to set several contracts while determining the order in which they try to fill them, which has different properties than standard models with multiple contracts. Furthermore, the low wages of Bulow and Levin are no longer an equilibrium, but competitive wages are. (JEL D86, J31, J41)

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:aea:aecrev:v:97:y:2007:i:5:p:1957-1969
Journal Field
General
Author Count
1
Added to Database
2026-01-26