تطابق یا عدم تطابق : سیاست دستمزد بهینه با قدرت جستجوی کارگران داخلی

We consider an equilibrium search model with on-the-job search where firms set wages. When an employee receives an outside job offer, it is optimal for the employer to try to retain the employee by matching the offer. This results in a wage increase for the worker. However, if workers are able to vary their search intensity, then this ‘offer-matching’ policy runs into a moral hazard problem. Knowing that outside offers lead to wage increases, workers tend to search more intensively, which is costly for the firms. Assuming that firms can commit never to match outside offers, we examine the set of firm types for which it is preferable to do so. In particular, we show that a plausible pattern is one where a ‘dual’ labor market emerges, with ‘bad’ jobs at low-productivity, nonmatching firms and ‘good’ jobs at high-productivity, matching firms.

This paper considers an equilibrium job search model with on-the-job search where firms set wages. As was shown by Postel-Vinay and Robin (2002a, 2002b), if employers are perfectly aware of all workers’ characteristics and job opportunities, then it is optimal for them to offer their reservation wage to any worker the firm comes in contact with. Also, when an employed worker receives an outside job offer, it is optimal for the incumbent employer to try to retain the worker by matching the outside offer, so long as the resulting wage does not exceed the worker’s marginal productivity. This triggers a Bertrand game between the incumbent employer and the ‘poacher,’ which results in either a wage increase or a job change for the worker.

In this paper we have addressed the issue of a firm’s optimal wage policy when employed workers can strategically use the search for outside job offers to put employers into competition, thus forcing the latter to raise their wages. Specifically, we show that it may be profitable for some firms to ‘refuse competition,’ i.e. to ex ante commit not to match the outside job offers received by their employees, even when it is ex post optimal to match those offers.