NBER Working Papers by Robin S.. Lee

We introduce the interview assignment problem, which generalizes the one-to-one matching model of Gale and Shapley (1962) by introducing a stage of costly information acquisition. Agents may learn preferences over partners via costly interviews. Although there exist multiple equilibria where all agents receive the same number of interviews, efficiency depends on overlap -- the number of common interview partners among agents. We prove the equilibria with the highest degree of overlap yields the highest probability of being matched. The analysis suggests that institutions which ration interviews or create labor market segmentation may lead to greater efficiency in information acquisition activities.