From 1986 through 1997 the entry-level market for American gastroenterologists was organized by a centralized clearinghouse. Before, and since, it has been conducted via a decentralized market in which appointment dates have unraveled to well over a year before the start of employment. The...

The collapse of the clearinghouse for the entry-level gastroenterology labor market offers a unique opportunity to study how stable clearinghouses succeed and fail. To explore the reasons for the failure of the clearinghouse (and why failures of this kind of clearinghouse have been so rare), we...

Many markets have organizations that influence or try to establish norms concerning when offers can be made, accepted and rejected. Examining a dozen previously studied markets suggests that markets in which transactions are made far in advance are markets in which it is acceptable for firms to...

Markets sometimes unravel, with offers becoming inefficiently early. Often this is attributed to competition arising from an imbalance of demand and supply, typically excess demand for workers. However this presents a puzzle, since unraveling can only occur when firms are willing to make early...

New gastroenterologists participated in a labor market clearinghouse (a quot;matchquot;) from 1986 through the late 1990's, after which the match was abandoned. This provides an opportunity to study the effects of a match, by observing the differences in the outcomes and organization of the...

This paper summarizes research on gender differences in economic settings. I discuss gender differences in attitudes toward competition, altruism and the closely related issue of cooperation, and risk preferences. While gender differences in competition are large and robust, the results are much...

We study a simple model of a decentralized market game in which firms make directed offers to workers. We focus on markets in which agents have aligned preferences. When agents have complete information or when there are no frictions in the economy, there exists an equilibrium that yields the...

Many labor markets share three stylized facts: employers cannot give full attention to all candidates, candidates are ready to provide information about their preferences for particular employers, and employers value and are prepared to act on this information. In this paper we study how a...

The large literature on costly signaling and the somewhat scant literature on preference signaling had varying success in showing the effectiveness of signals. We use a field experiment to show that even when everyone can send a signal, signals are free and the only costs are opportunity costs,...

Experimental tests of dynamically inconsistent time preferences have largely relied on choices over time-dated monetary rewards. Several recent studies have failed to find the standard patterns of time inconsistency. However, such monetary studies contain often discussed confounds. In this...