While sociologists and economists recognize that employment is fundamentally a problem of matching workers with jobs, most empirical research on occupations and labor markets has focused on either the structure of supply of workers or the structure of demand for workers. While some have recognized job searching as the mechanism by which individual jobs and workers find each other, few labor market models formally incorporate different recruitment strategies into the matching process. The goal of this study is to develop a dynamic two-sided employment model in which the information available to workers and employers about each other may be constrained by characteristics of workers and of jobs, as well as on network ties between workers. Using simulation, we explore the system-level properties (measured in terms such as turnover rates, over- and under-qualification of workers, duration of vacancies) resulting from various recruitment strategies.
Joint work with Peter Hoff, Department of Statistics and CSSS
