Katherine Stovel

Associate Professor of Sociology
206R Savery Hall
Box 353340
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98105
206|616|3820

stovel at dot u dot washington dot edu
Hearing About A Job
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Funding

This research is funded by NSF grant SES-0351834, Stovel, PI.

We also received seed grant funding from the Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences (University of Washington).
Research Team, Spring 2006

From left to right:  Stovel, Lee, Chiang, Fountain, and Shukla


Project Description

This project develops a dynamic model of the structure of job-finding and its consequences for segregation in labor markets. We begin with the obvious insight that which people end up in which jobs is not merely a matter of the individual and human capital characteristics of workers and the requirements and rewards of jobs, but is also a function of the process by which persons and jobs are matched with one another. In spite of fascinating developments in the economics of information, how workers and employers find out about each other (and the consequences of information structures) remains a poorly modeled aspect of the matching process.

Because this problem is difficult to study empirically using standard methods, I have developed a simulation modeling framework that explicitly incorporates potential effects of different information structures into the two-sided matching problem. The model is flexible enough to represent common types of labor markets (including spot markets for labor and vacancy competition regimes), and is designed to explore the consequences of recruiting and hiring regimes on both macro-level labor market patterns and individual outcomes. The payoff of the simulation model is that it can be used as an experimental laboratory to (a) shed light on the interaction of multiple potentially segregating mechanisms; and (b) expose each to changing exogenous conditions. We are most excited about the models potential to explore the relative impact of various mechanisms that produce and/or maintain segregation within a labor market.

This figure shows the shape of the information advantage available when actors use both first and second order network ties to search for jobs.  Here k is the mean degree of actors, and alpha is a parameter that determines the levelof local clustering in the network (0 = an extremely clustered graph; 20 = a largely random graph).  Q  is the proportion of  all possible information to which actors have access (1.0 equals perfect information).  Clustering affects information access very little if only direct ties are used; if direct and indirect ties are used, there is a phase shift in the information quantity at moderate levels of clustering.  This is the mechanism by which small worlds can facilitate diffusion of information.

Stovel and Fountain 2004
Send mail to: stovel at u dot washington dot edu
Last modified: 1/17/2007 5:42 PM