Investing in Skill and Searching for Coworkers: Endogenous Participation in a Matching Market
研究搜索摩擦如何影响劳动者在技能投资后参与匹配市场的决策，发现匹配顾虑而非投资成本会阻碍边际劳动者参与，且该均衡具有反直觉的比较静态性质。
We demonstrate how search frictions have important yet subtle implications for participation in a skilled labor market by studying a model in which agents invest in skill prior to searching for coworkers. Search frictions induce the existence of acceptance-constrained equilibria, whereby matching concerns—as opposed to investment costs—dissuade the marginal agent from investing and participating in the skilled matching market. Such equilibria are robust, relevant, and have comparative static properties that contrast sharply with the intuitive properties arising in a benchmark static setting. We consider an extension with separate matching “marketplaces,” and show that our main results continue to hold.