WINE 2006: Internet and Network Economics pp 389-400 | Cite as

Secretary Problems with Competing Employers

  • Nicole Immorlica
  • Robert Kleinberg
  • Mohammad Mahdian
Conference paper
Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNCS, volume 4286)

Abstract

In many decentralized labor markets, job candidates are offered positions at very early stages in the hiring process. It has been argued that these early offers are an effect of the competition between employers for the best candidate. This work studies the timing of offers in a theoretical model based on the classical secretary problem. We consider a secretary problem with multiple employers and study the equilibria of the induced game. Our results confirm the observation of early offers in labor markets: for several classes of strategies based on optimal stopping theory, as the number of employers grows, the timing of the earliest offer decreases.

Keywords

Nash Equilibrium Active Player Stochastic Game Threshold Time Pure Nash Equilibrium 
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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006

Authors and Affiliations

  • Nicole Immorlica
    • 1
  • Robert Kleinberg
    • 2
  • Mohammad Mahdian
    • 1
  1. 1.Microsoft ResearchOne Microsoft WayRedmond
  2. 2.UC Berkeley Computer Science DivisionCornell University Computer Science Department 

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