Abstract
Search is a process of learning and discovery. Consumers search for goods that fit
their requirements and budgets, and workers search for jobs commensurate to their
skills. Learning can vary by domain—whether a person learns about herself, about
the other market participants, about the fit between both, or about the conditions
in the larger economic environment; and it can span several domains at the same
time. While the search process has traditionally been modeled as a black box where
it simply takes time to locate the desired opportunity, recent work and future research
will break up this process to be more explicit about the source of the problem. This
has been missing partly because it is easier to model environments where everyone
and everything is identical. Once it is acknowledged that people, firms and goods are
different, that they learn over time about their type, and that the differences interact
in important ways, new avenues for research open up. While much of existing work
has focused on quantity (i.e., number of jobs found), future work is likely to focus
more on the quality (i.e., how valuable is this job to society). This essay discusses
which elements might shape the research in this area, and highlights the new lessons
that are likely to emerge from this work.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences |
Subtitle of host publication | An Interdisciplinary, Searchable, and Linkable Resource |
Publisher | John Wiley & Sons Inc. |
Pages | 1-14 |
ISBN (Print) | 978-1-118-90077-2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 15 May 2015 |
Keywords
- search
- learning
- unemployment
- heterogeneity
- updating
- skills
- complementarity
- invention
- discouragement