Signaling versus Auditing
研究竞争性劳动力市场中工人通过教育传递生产力信号与企业通过审计了解工人生产力之间的权衡，发现审计总是伴随部分混同，而教育仅在低生产力工人较少时作为信号使用。
We analyze a competitive labor market in which workers signal their productivities through education à la Spence (1973), and firms have the option of auditing to learn workers’ productivities. Audits are costly and non–contractible. We characterize the trade–offs between signaling by workers and costly auditing by firms. Auditing is always associated with (partial) pooling of worker types, and education is used as a signalonly if relatively few workers have low productivity. Our results feature new auditingpatterns and explain empirical observations in labor economics like wage differentialsand comparative statics of education choices. Our analysis applies also to other signalingproblems, e.g., the financial structure of firms, warranties, and initial public offerings.