Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/46001 
Year of Publication: 
2011
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 5452
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
The introduction of firm size into labor search models raises the question how wages are set when average and marginal product differ. We develop and analyze an alternative to the existing bargaining framework: Firms compete for labor by publicly posting long- term contracts. In such a competitive search setting, firms achieve faster growth not only by posting more vacancies, but also by offering higher lifetime wages that attract more workers which allows to fill vacancies with higher probability, consistent with empirical regularities. The model also captures several other observations about firm size, job flows, and pay. In contrast to bargaining models, efficiency obtains on all margins of job creation and destruction, both with idiosyncratic and aggregate shocks. The planner solution allows a tractable characterization which is useful for computational applications.
Subjects: 
labor market search
multi-worker firms
job creation and job destruction
JEL: 
E24
J64
L11
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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