IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed012/592.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Wages, Job Queues, and Skills

Author

Listed:
  • Ronald Wolthoff

    (University of Toronto)

  • Ioana Marinescu

    (University of Chicago)

Abstract

We study the relationship between wages and the number and quality of applicants that a vacancy attracts. Using data from a large US employment website, we show that higher wages attract better applicants. Surprisingly, higher wages are associated with fewer applications, and this is robust to controlling for industry and occupation fixed effects. Only within specific job titles are higher wages associated with more applications. Our theoretical model shows that such a pattern is consistent with skills demanded by firms being highly job specific. The model has additional testable implications about rent sharing and unemployment rates by skill.

Suggested Citation

  • Ronald Wolthoff & Ioana Marinescu, 2012. "Wages, Job Queues, and Skills," 2012 Meeting Papers 592, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    • Handle: RePEc:red:sed012:592
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://red-files-public.s3.amazonaws.com/meetpapers/2012/paper_592.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Galenianos, Manolis & Kircher, Philipp, 2009. "Directed search with multiple job applications," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(2), pages 445-471, March.
    2. James Albrecht & Pieter A. Gautier & Susan Vroman, 2006. "Equilibrium Directed Search with Multiple Applications," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(4), pages 869-891.
    3. Ronald Wolthoff, 2010. "Applications and Interviews: A Structural Analysis of Two-Sided Simultaneous Search," 2010 Meeting Papers 114, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    4. Faberman, R. Jason & Menzio, Guido, 2018. "Evidence on the relationship between recruiting and the starting wage," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 67-79.
    5. Kenneth Burdett & Shouyong Shi & Randall Wright, 2001. "Pricing and Matching with Frictions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(5), pages 1060-1085, October.
    6. Kevin Lang & Michael Manove & William T. Dickens, 2005. "Racial Discrimination in Labor Markets with Posted Wage Offers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1327-1340, September.
    7. Philipp Kircher, 2009. "Efficiency of Simultaneous Search," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 117(5), pages 861-913, October.
    8. Albrecht, James W & Axell, Bo, 1984. "An Equilibrium Model of Search Unemployment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 92(5), pages 824-840, October.
    9. Gueorgui Kambourov & Iourii Manovskii, 2009. "Occupational Mobility and Wage Inequality," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 76(2), pages 731-759.
    10. Alain Delacroix & Shouyong Shi, 2006. "Directed Search On The Job And The Wage Ladder," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 47(2), pages 651-699, May.
    11. Harry J. Holzer & Lawrence F. Katz & Alan B. Krueger, 1991. "Job Queues and Wages," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(3), pages 739-768.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ronald Wolthoff, 2018. "Applications and Interviews: Firms’ Recruiting Decisions in a Frictional Labour Market," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 85(2), pages 1314-1351.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wolthoff, Ronald P., 2011. "It's About Time: Implications of the Period Length in an Equilibrium Job Search Model," IZA Discussion Papers 6002, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Galenianos, Manolis & Kircher, Philipp, 2009. "Directed search with multiple job applications," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(2), pages 445-471, March.
    3. Lester, Benjamin & Visschers, Ludo & Wolthoff, Ronald, 2015. "Meeting technologies and optimal trading mechanisms in competitive search markets," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 155(C), pages 1-15.
    4. Michèle Belot & Philipp Kircher & Paul Muller, 2022. "How Wage Announcements Affect Job Search—A Field Experiment," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 14(4), pages 1-67, October.
    5. Bradley, Jake, 2022. "Worker-Firm Screening and the Business Cycle," IZA Discussion Papers 15017, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Ronald P. Wolthoff, 2010. "Applications and Interviews: A Structural Analysis of Two-Sided Simultaneous Search," Working Papers tecipa-418, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    7. Ronald Wolthoff, 2018. "Applications and Interviews: Firms’ Recruiting Decisions in a Frictional Labour Market," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 85(2), pages 1314-1351.
    8. Manolis Galenianos & Philipp Kircher, 2012. "On The Game‐Theoretic Foundations Of Competitive Search Equilibrium," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 53(1), pages 1-21, February.
    9. Kyungmin Kim & Philipp Kircher, 2013. "Efficient Competition through Cheap Talk: Competing Auctions and Competitive Search without Ex Ante Price Commitment," Edinburgh School of Economics Discussion Paper Series 235, Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh.
    10. Jake Bradley, 2020. "Worker-firm screening and the business cycle," Discussion Papers 2020/11, University of Nottingham, Centre for Finance, Credit and Macroeconomics (CFCM).
    11. Cai, Xiaoming & Gautier, Pieter A. & Wolthoff, Ronald P., 2017. "Search frictions, competing mechanisms and optimal market segmentation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 453-473.
    12. Manolis Galenianos & Philipp Kircher & Gábor Virág, 2011. "Market Power And Efficiency In A Search Model," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 52(1), pages 85-103, February.
    13. Merlino, Luca Paolo, 2012. "Discrimination, technology and unemployment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 557-567.
    14. Gautier, Pieter A. & Wolthoff, Ronald P., 2009. "Simultaneous search with heterogeneous firms and ex post competition," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 311-319, June.
    15. Auster, Sarah & Gottardi, Piero, 2019. "Competing mechanisms in markets for lemons," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 14(3), July.
    16. Sarah Auster & Piero Gottardi & Ronald Wolthoff, 2022. "Simultaneous Search and Adverse Selection," Working Papers tecipa-734, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    17. Albrecht, James & Cai, Xiaoming & Gautier, Pieter & Vroman, Susan, 2023. "On the foundations of competitive search equilibrium with and without market makers," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 208(C).
    18. Suren Basov & John Ian King & Lawrence Uren, 2010. "The Employed, the Unemployed, and the Unemployable: Directed Search with Worker Heterogeneity," Working Papers 2010.03, School of Economics, La Trobe University.
    19. Pieter A. Gautier & Christian L. Holzner, 2011. "Simultaneous Search and Network Efficiency," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 11-092/3, Tinbergen Institute.
    20. Gabriele Camera & Jaehong Kim, 2016. "Dynamic directed search," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 62(1), pages 131-154, June.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:red:sed012:592. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christian Zimmermann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sedddea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.