EHP: Market Culture, Performance, and the Timing of Transactions

这个项目将调查集中式和分散式劳动力市场的匹配过程，以及其他匹配市场，如大学招生。其目标是更好地了解劳动力市场，以及劳动力市场如何有效地将人与职位相匹配(顺便说一句，劳动力市场给学生提供了多大的激励，让他们为职位做准备)。调查的经验性部分将包括美国(包括第一个职位和胃肠病学等专业)和英国医生的入门级劳动力市场，以及律师(特别关注美国联邦上诉法院的书记员职位和加拿大的“兼职”职位)、牙医、临床心理学家和日本顶尖大学应届毕业生的入门级劳动力市场。以往的研究表明，这些市场在其历史上都有一个时期表现出交易时间解体的现象，即市场交易因竞争而变得越来越早，导致各种类型的市场失灵。每个不同市场目前的体制结构，其组织范围从几乎完全集中到几乎完全分散，在很大程度上是对这一历史的回应。该项目将分析市场组织的非正式规则，以及这些规则如何与供需相互作用，以影响交易的时间。即使是去中心化的市场，对于如何以及何时提出、接受和拒绝要约，也可能有详细的、有时是明确的规则和规范。例如，在一些劳动力市场，雇主提出爆炸性的提议是惯例，应聘者在收到其他提议之前必须回复，而在其他市场，所有提议都保持足够长的开放时间，以便求职者比较多个提议。同样，对于候选人在何种情况下可以体面地改变对他接受的提议的看法，规范也不同。这些差异可能会影响谁向谁提出要约，何时提出要约，以及产生什么样的结果。这项调查建议通过实地观察、实验室实验和博弈论模型来探索这些问题以及它们如何影响特定的市场。本研究的结果应该有助于阐明经历了时机问题的市场的最新发展，例如上诉法官的书记员市场、大学和研究生招生市场以及进入医学专业和子专业的市场。粗略地说，当这些市场允许有效的配对时，它们为参与者提供了最好的服务，例如，当最好的申请者与最好的职位匹配时，结果将影响到如何改善这方面的市场表现。

This project will investigate matching processes in centralized and decentralized labor markets, and other matching markets, such as college admissions. The goal is to better understand labor markets, and how efficiently they match people with positions (and incidentally how much incentive they give students to prepare themselves for positions). The empirical part of the investigation will include entry level labor markets for physicians in the U.S. (including both first positions, and specialties, such as gastroenterology) and in Britain, as well as entry level labor markets for lawyers (with particular attention to clerkships in Federal appellate courts in the U.S., and for "articling" positions in Canada), dentists, clinical psychologists, and new graduates of elite Japanese universities. Past work has shown that each of these markets had a period in its history which exhibited the phenomenon of unraveling of transaction times ("jumping the gun"), in which market transactions became earlier and earlier in response to competition, resulting in various types of market failure. The present institutional structure of each of these diverse markets, whose organizations range from almost completely centralized to almost completely decentralized, is in substantial part a response to this history. The project will analyze the informal rules by which markets are organized, and how these interact with supply and demand to affect the timing of transactions. Even decentralized markets may have elaborate, sometimes explicit rules and norms about how and when offers will be made, accepted and rejected. For example, in some labor markets, it is conventional for employers to make exploding offers, to which candidates must reply before receiving other offers, while in other markets it is customary for all offers to remain open long enough to allow candidates to compare multiple offers. Similarly, norms differ concerning the circumstances under which a candidate may honorably change his mind about an offer he has accepted. These differences can influence who makes offers to whom, at what time, and what outcome is produced. This investigation proposes to explore these issues and how they impact particular markets) using field observation, laboratory experiments, and game theoretic models.The results of the present study should help illuminate recent developments in markets that have experienced timing problems, such as the market for clerks for appellate judges, college and graduate admissions, and entry into medical specialties and subspecialties. Loosely speaking, these markets serve their participants best when they allow efficient matching, e.g. when the best applicants are matched to the best positions, and the results will have implications for how market performance in this respect can be improved.