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

该项目将调查集中和分散的劳动力市场以及其他匹配市场（如大学招生）的匹配过程。 我们的目标是更好地了解劳动力市场，以及他们如何有效地将人与职位相匹配（顺便说一句，他们给了学生多少激励来为职位做准备）。调查的实证部分将包括美国（包括第一职位和专业，如胃肠病学）和英国医生的入门级劳动力市场，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书记员职位，以及在加拿大的“实习”职位）、牙医、临床心理学家和日本精英大学的应届毕业生。 以往的研究表明，这些市场在历史上都有一段时期表现出交易时间的分散（“抢跑”）现象，在这段时期内，市场交易随着竞争而变得越来越早，从而导致了各种各样的市场失灵。这些不同市场中的每一个目前的制度结构，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段历史的回应。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求相互作用，影响交易的时机。 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，雇主通常会提供爆炸性的报价，候选人必须在收到其他报价之前回复，而在其他市场，所有报价都保持足够长的时间，以便候选人比较多个报价。同样，关于候选人在何种情况下可以体面地改变对他已接受的提议的看法，规范也各不相同。这些差异会影响谁向谁提出要约，在什么时间，以及产生什么结果。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以及它们如何影响特定的市场。本研究的结果应有助于阐明经历了时间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亚专业市场。粗略地说，当这些市场允许有效的配对时，例如当最好的申请人与最好的职位配对时，这些市场对其参与者的服务最好，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.