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Destabilizing search technology

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  • Potter, Tristan

Abstract

Modern job search technologies enable job seekers to monitor the arrival of newly posted vacancies. This paper conceptualizes search as a monitoring decision and shows that monitoring technologies give rise to a novel source of strategic complementarities in search and can thus lead to potentially destabilizing multiplicity of equilibria. The model provides a theory of belief-driven fluctuations in labor supply that can permanently shift the path of the economy, and offers an explanation for persistently weak wage growth despite low unemployment during the recovery from the Great Recession.

Suggested Citation

  • Potter, Tristan, 2024. "Destabilizing search technology," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:moneco:v:145:y:2024:i:c:s0304393224000102
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jmoneco.2024.103557
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Search and matching; Online job search; Hysteresis; Beliefs;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
    • E71 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on the Macro Economy
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes

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