Essays on employers search

Vera Brencic, Purdue University

Abstract

This dissertation includes three essays on employers' search behavior that explore a simple yet central question to the literature on search, i.e., do the costs of continued search affect employers' search behavior and if so what adjustments are employers willing to undergo to avoid a future increase in the costs of keeping their vacancies open. In so doing the thesis makes two contributions. First, while existing search literature typically considers an environment where employers' optimal search strategy is constant over the duration of the employers' search, this thesis proposes a theoretical framework in which the employers' search environment changes and explores, theoretically and empirically, employers' optimal adjustments to such changes. Second, unlike job searchers' behavior that has been studied extensively, evidence reported in this thesis contributes to a scant empirical literature on employers' search behavior by making use of a novel vacancy data set. Specifically, the three essays explore whether an employer's knowledge of a future job opening affects how the employer goes about searching for a worker. Unlike employers who search to fill a current opening, employers with advance notice of a vacancy search to fill a future opening and do not incur a loss of output while searching prior to the advance notice period exhaustion date. Based on such a distinction between employers, Essay One establishes two findings using a new Slovenian vacancy data set. First, the essay documents that employers who received advance notice of a vacancy search differently compared to employers who did not, confirming a similar finding reported for the U.S. in related literature. More importantly, the essay documents the effect additional week of search has on the vacancy's hazard as the employers approach exhaustion of the advance notice period. Essay Two explores whether employers with advance notice search differently compared to employers who did not receive advance notice of a vacancy because they are more selective or on account of some other reason. Essay Three proposes a theoretical framework that addresses findings in Essays One and Two. Further, the essay explores the role of advance notice of a vacancy in explaining the differences between the employer's offered contract type/qualification requirement at the time of a vacancy posting and the actual contract type/worker's attained qualification at the time of hiring.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Barron, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Labor economics|Education

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