Costly Interviews

Abstract:     
Interviewing in professional labor markets is a costly process for firms. Moreover, poor screening can have a persistent negative impact on firms' bottom lines and candidates' careers. In a simple dynamic model where firms can pay a cost to interview applicants who have private information about their own ability, potentially large inefficiencies arise from information-based unemployment, where able workers are rejected by firms because of their lack of offers in previous interviews. This effect may make the market less efficient than random matching. We show that the first best can be achieved using either a mechanism with transfers or one without transfers.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 30

Keywords: Decentralized Labor Markets, Professional Labor Markets, Asymmetric Information, Interview costs, Matching

JEL Classification: D82, J21, J44

working papers series