Students on the Job Market and Placement Record

PhD Students on Job Market, 2020

Haoran LEI

Job Market Paper : "Sequential Screening Meets Last-minute Sales"
Research Interests : Microeconomic Theory (especially mechanism design), Behavioral Economics, Applied Microeconomic Theory

Fei ZHOU

Job Market Paper: "Competitive Search with Repeated Moral Hazard"
Reserach Interests : Macroeconomics, Dynamic Contract, Production Network

Detailed Job Candidate profiles

Haoran LEI

Job Market Paper

Sequential Screening Meets Last-minute Sales

Abstract: 

This paper considers a two-period sequential screening model with arrivals of buyers in each period. Early buyers privately observe an imperfect signal regrading their valuation in period one, and then privately observe their valuation in period two. Last-minute buyers arrive in period two and already know their valuation. Early buyers strategically choose when to enter the market. We characterize the seller’s optimal deterministic mechanism when the seller has full commitment power. The equilibrium is semi-pooling: buyers who are likely to have high valuations are separated by different refund contracts, and those likely to have low valuations are pooled by some full refund contract, corresponding to the posted price in period two. We also discuss the optimal mechanism when the seller has only partial commitment power.

Research Interests

Mechanism design, Behavioral Economics, Applied Microeconomic Theory

Personal Website: https://albertlei.github.io

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Fei ZHOU

Job Market Paper

Competitive Search with Repeated Moral Hazard

Abstract: 

This paper studies the effects of moral hazard on employment and wage dynamics. I build a continuous-time competitive search model with aggregate productivity shocks. Due to unobservable idiosyncratic shocks, employers need to design dynamic optimal contract to incentivize workers to exert efforts. To quantify the magnitude of the underlying information friction, the model is calibrated to match the volatility of individual worker’s wage residual in PSID, which corresponding to wage movements that cannot be accounted by observables. I show that the unemployment rate volatility is 2-6 times larger than the case where the moral hazard problem is absent. Meanwhile, the model endogenously generates counter-cyclical wage dispersion. These findings are due to the following novel channel: a higher aggregate productivity reduces the importance of unobservable idiosyncratic shocks, which makes shirking easier to be detected. With a relaxed incentive constraint, firms are more willing to post vacancy, and have less need to expose workers to risk. In terms of government policy, I find that an increase of unemployment benefit or minimum wage has much stronger adverse effects on employment rate when moral hazard is taken into account.

Research Interests

Macroeconomics, Dynamic Contract, Production Network

Personal website:  https://feizhouecon.weebly.com/

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Students' Placement

MPhil/PhD Program in Economics:  Student Placement

2019

2018

2017 

2016