Volume 10, Number 2 (Spring) 1975
Barnes, William F. 1975. "Job Search Models, the Duration of Unemployment, and the Asking Wage: Some Empirical Evidence." Journal of Human Resources 10(2):230-240.
Three recent untested theoretical models of the wage setting behavior of the unemployed jobseeker by Gronau, Mortensen, and McCall are compared. While the Mortensen model predicts that the minimum asking wage is constant over the duration of unemployment, the models of Gronau and McCall, for different reasons, predict that the minimum asking wage declines over the duration of unemployment. Data from a sample of unemployed jobseekers are used to test the alternative implications. The McCall model, emphasizing downward flexibility in the minimum asking wage in response to revised wage expectations over the duration of unemployment, is the best description of the wage setting behavior of unemployed jobseekers.
The author is currently a Brookings Economic Policy Fellow, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. The author wishes to thank Edward D. Kalachek, H. Gregg Lewis, Ethel B. Jones, and the referees for helpful comments.
© 2003 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
US ISSN 0022-166X