Life-Cycle Job Choice and the Demand and Supply of Entry Level Jobs: Some Evidence from the Air Force
构建了一个生命周期职业选择模型，并将其与就业需求库存模型结合，用于分析美国空军士兵市场的入门级工作供需，估计了模型并讨论了传统劳动力供给模型中的偏差来源。
T HE theory of occupational choice has largely left the choice of job and duration of employment in jobs unexplained. If agents plan a length of stay on the job when they are employed, then turnover is determined when a new hire is made. In the steady state, new hires replace losses from the employment pool, and hence the demand for new employees reflects the supply of employment duration as well as demand behavior. The employer's demand for a stock of employees and the supplied duration of employment determine the flow demand for new hires. If flow supply and demand are in equilibrium, the supply of workers and their planned duration of employment must support equality of replacements and losses. An adequate theory of the labor market must explain these stock/flow relations and provide some basis for separating demand and supply behavior. In this paper we develop a model of this process and estimate the model for the U.S. Air Force enlisted personnel market. We begin with a simple theory of the life-cycle job choice problem. This theory posits job sequences as the objects of choice and the optimal sequence determines the type of job chosen at each point in the life cycle as well as the duration of employment in each job. This simple theory of life-cycle supply is integrated into an inventory model of employment demand to achieve an equilibrium model. The model is extended to consider the complications introduced by stochastic supply behavior and quality rationing by the employer. The sources of bias in supply elasticity estimates of conventional labor supply models are identified and discussed. Finally, the model is estimated using data on Air Force enlisted personnel.