Wage-Directed Job Match with Multiple Applications and Multiple Vacancies: The Optimal Job Application Strategy and Wage Dispersion

This paper develops a model of directed-search where workers’ preference for a higher wage is explicitly modelled into their application strategy. In a general setting where jobs offer non-uniform wages and different probabilities of a job offer, the optimal strategy for selecting the set of applied jobs is established. In applying this to a homogeneous-workers job-matching market, the equilibrium outcome is then shown to entail wage dispersion when firms have non-uniform labour demand. Finally a matching function is derived that captures both urnball and multiple-applications frictions, that nests many of the existing functions.