We consider a labor market with search frictions in which workers make multiple applications and firms can post and commit to general mechanisms that may be conditioned both on the number of applications received and on the number of offers received by its candidate. When the contract space...

In this paper, we show how time-varying unemployment benefits can generate equilibrium wage dispersion in an economy in which identical firms post wages and homogeneous workers search for acceptable offers. We allow for matching frictions and for free entry and exit of vacancies, and we model...

We analyse a model of equilibrium directed search in a large labour market. Each worker, observing the wages posted at all vacancies, makes a fixed, finite number of applications, a. We allow for the possibility of ex post competition should more than one vacancy want to hire the same worker....

We analyze the implications of multiple applications by job seekers for the microfoundations of the matching function. We emphasize a coordination failure caused by multiple applications, namely, that firms can waste resources processing applicants who are ultimately hired elsewhere.

In this paper, we present a directed search model of the housing market. The pricing mechanism we analyze reflects the way houses are bought and sold in the United States. Our model is consistent with the observation that houses are sometimes sold above, sometimes below and sometimes at the...