Abstract
I analyze a large labor market where homogeneous firms post wages to direct the search of workers who differ in productivity. I show that the model has a unique equilibrium. The wage differential depends positively on the workers' productivity differential only when the latter is large. When the productivity differential is small, high-productivity workers get a lower wage than low-productivity workers. This reverse wage differential remains even when the productivity differential shrinks to zero. However, the equilibrium is socially efficient. High-productivity workers always get the employment priority and higher expected wages than low-productivity workers. Although discrimination in terms of expected wages does not exist, conventional measures are likely to incorrectly find discrimination in the model.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 849-875 |
| Number of pages | 27 |
| Journal | European Economic Review |
| Volume | 50 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - May 2006 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Finance
- Economics and Econometrics
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