We consider a Rothschild-Stiglitz-Spence labour market screening model and employ a centralised mechanism to coordinate … the efficient matching of workers to firms. This mechanism can be thought of as operated by a recruitment agency, an … employment office or head hunter. In a centralised descending-bid, multi-item procurement auction, workers submitwage-bids for …

uncertainty can be resolved but both processes are costly. Intermediaries (recruiters) can perform the job matching but only at … to negotiate by itself. We study the role of an external intermediary who uses a Vickrey auction to discriminate between … lowers the social efficiency of matching if workers choose recruiters randomly. If we allow recruiters to announce their …

We present a competing-auction theory of the labor market, where job candidates auction their labor services to … employers. An equilibrium matching function emerges which has many of the features commonly assumed, including constant returns … to scale in large economies. The auction mechanism also generates equilibrium wage dispersion among homogeneous workers …

We present a competing-auction theory of the labour market, where job candidates auction their labor services to … employers. An equilibrium matching function emerges which has many of the features commonly assumed, including constant returns … to scale in large economies. The auction process also generates an equilibrium wage dispersion among homogeneous workers …

We present a competing-auction theory of the labour market, where job candidates auction their labor services to … employers. An equilibrium matching function emerges which has many of the features commonly assumed, including constant returns … to scale in large economies. The auction process also generates an equilibrium wage dispersion among homogeneous workers …

optimal for the seller to do away with any matching considerations and allocate the contract on the basis of price alone. If … matching is sufficiently important to the seller, the optimal mechanism may be implemented without commitment. However, if … matching is not sufficiently important, the seller suffers a loss when he is unable to commit. The magnitude of this loss …

In many auctions, matching between the bidder and seller raises the value of the contract for both parties. However … depresses bids. The more matching matters, the greater the penalty associated with observing the matches. …