دانلود رایگان مقاله در مورد بهینه سازی بهینه شبکه های اجتماعی در بازار کار اصطکاکی با عدم هماهنگی شغلی

abstract

This paper incorporates social networks into a frictional labour market framework. There are two worker types and two occupations, which are subject to correlated fluctuations in output. The equilibrium is characterized by occupational mismatch which is associated with a wage penalty. Every worker has a fixed number of social contacts in the network. The fraction of contacts of the same occupational type defines homophily of the social network, so this paper investigates the optimal level of network homophily. Workers are risk-neutral and take aggregate variables as given, so their optimal individual choice is full homophily. This is different from the social planner's perspective. The planner internalizes external effects of workers' network choices on aggregate variables, so there exists a unique interior value of network homophily maximizing the present value of income. On the one hand, higher homophily is associated with lower occupational mismatch. But on the other hand, higher homophily separates the two groups of workers, prevents exchange of information about open vacancies, and leads to more unemployment, especially in recessions. So it is the trade-off between these two effects and not the desire to reduce income volatility, as in standard portfolio theory, which gives rise to network diversification. Comparative statics shows that optimal network homophily is lower and diversification is stronger with a lowe

5. Conclusions

This paper develops a search model with two worker types, two occupations and correlated output fluctuations. The model is used to analyze the effect of social networks on occupational mismatch and workers' expected income. Given that workers are risk-neutral and take aggregate macroeconomic variables as given they choose a fully homophilous network. This is different when the problem is considered from a social planner perspective. On the one hand, stronger homophily leads to a lower probability of mismatch. This is a positive effect on the expected income. On the other hand, stronger homophily leads to a higher risk of unemployment, especially when output and labour demand are low in the primary occupation of the worker. This trade-off generates an interior optimal network homophily from the perspective of the planner who is accounting for the response of aggregate variables. Hence this paper supports policies targetting stronger occupational diversification of social networks (i.e. interdisciplinary projects). Comparative statics shows that optimal network diversification is stronger with lower mismatch penalty and lower unemployment benefit but it is weaker if outputs in the two occupations are positively correlated. On-the-job search reduces expected income and raises the equilibrium unemployment rate. This is due to the fact that job information is less likely to reach unemployed workers. However, this negative effect is partially neutralized by endogenous job creation.