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Coles, Peter

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Coles, Peter

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2010 - 20143

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Author's Publications: search.filters.isAuthorOfPublication.e2226419-db0c-4b9d-90bc-eebd927270da

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Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Preference Signaling in Matching Markets
    (2013-04-18) Coles, Peter; Kushnir, Alexey; Niederle, Muriel
    Many labor markets share three stylized facts: employers cannot give full attention to all candidates, candidates are ready to provide information about their preferences for particular employers, and employers value and are prepared to act on this information. In this paper we study how a signaling mechanism, where each worker can send a signal of interest to one employer, facilitates matches in such markets. We find that introducing a signaling mechanism increases the welfare of workers and the number of matches, while the change in firm welfare is ambiguous. A signaling mechanism adds the most value for balanced markets.
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    Strategic Behavior in Unbalanced Matching Markets
    (2014) Coles, Peter; Gonczarowski, Yannai; Shorrer, Ran
    In this paper we explore how the balance of agents on the two sides of a matching market impacts their potential for strategic manipulation. Coles and Shorrer [2014] previously showed that in large, balanced, uniform markets using the Men-Proposing Deferred Acceptance Algorithm, each woman's best response to truthful behavior by all other agents is to truncate her list substantially. In fact, the optimal degree of truncation for such a woman goes to 100% of her list as the market size grows large. Recent findings of Ashlagi et. al. [2014] demonstrate that in unbalanced random markets, the change in expected payoffs is small when one reverses which side of the market “proposes,” suggesting there is little potential gain from manipulation. Inspired by these findings, we study the implications of imbalance on strategic behavior in the incomplete information setting. We show that the “long” side has significantly reduced incentives for manipulation in this setting, but that the same doesn't always apply to the “short” side. We also show that risk aversion and correlation in preferences affect the extent of optimal manipulation.
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    The Job Market for New Economists: A Market Design Perspective
    (American Economic Association, 2010) Coles, Peter; Cawley, John; Levine, Phillip B.; Niederle, Muriel; Roth, Alvin; Siegfried, John J.
    This paper, written by the members of the American Economic Association (AEA) Ad Hoc Committee on the Job Market, provides an overview of the market for new Ph.D. economists. It describes the role of the AEA in the market and focuses in particular on two mechanisms adopted in recent years at the suggestion of our Committee. First, job market applicants now have a signaling service to send an expression of special interest to up to two employers prior to interviews at the January Allied Social Science Associations (ASSA) meetings. Second, the AEA now invites candidates who are still on the market, and employers whose positions are still vacant, to participate in a web-based "scramble" to reduce search costs and thicken the late part of the job market. We present statistics on the activity in these market mechanisms and present survey evidence that both mechanisms have facilitated matches. The paper concludes by discussing the emergence of platforms for transmitting job market information and other design issues that may arise in the market for new economists.