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

该项目将调查集中式和分散式劳动力市场以及其他匹配市场（如大学入学）的匹配过程。其目标是更好地了解劳动力市场，以及它们如何有效地将人与职位匹配起来（顺便提一下，它们给了学生多大的激励来为职位做准备）。调查的实证部分将包括美国和英国医生的入门级劳动力市场（包括初级职位和专业，如胃肠病学），以及律师的入门级劳动力市场（特别关注美国联邦上诉法院的职员，以及加拿大的“文章”职位），牙医，临床心理学家和日本精英大学的应届毕业生。过去的研究表明，每一个市场在其历史上都有一段时间表现出交易时间解体的现象（“跳枪”），在这段时间里，市场交易变得越来越早，以应对竞争，导致各种类型的市场失灵。这些不同的市场，其组织范围从几乎完全集中到几乎完全分散，其目前的制度结构在很大程度上是对这一历史的反应。该项目将分析组织市场的非正式规则，以及这些规则如何与供需相互作用以影响交易时间。即使是分散的市场也可能有详细的、有时是明确的规则和规范，规定如何以及何时提出、接受和拒绝要约。例如，在一些劳动力市场，雇主通常会开出爆炸性的报价，候选人必须在收到其他报价之前回复，而在其他市场，通常所有报价都会保留足够长的时间，让候选人可以比较多个报价。同样，关于候选人在何种情况下可以体面地改变他已接受的提议的主意，规范也有所不同。这些差异会影响谁在什么时间向谁提供报价，以及产生什么样的结果。本研究拟通过实地观察、实验室实验和博弈论模型来探讨这些问题及其对特定市场的影响。本研究的结果应有助于阐明经历过时机问题的市场的最新发展，例如上诉法官的书记员市场、大学和研究生入学市场以及进入医学专业和亚专业的市场。粗略地说，当这些市场允许有效匹配时，这些市场为参与者提供了最好的服务，例如，当最优秀的申请人匹配到最好的职位时，结果将对如何改善这方面的市场表现产生影响。

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.