Structure, Behavior, and Market Power in an Evolutionary Labor Market with Adaptive Search

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1999-10-01
Authors
Tesfatsion, Leigh
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Tesfatsion, Leigh
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Economics

The Department of Economic Science was founded in 1898 to teach economic theory as a truth of industrial life, and was very much concerned with applying economics to business and industry, particularly agriculture. Between 1910 and 1967 it showed the growing influence of other social studies, such as sociology, history, and political science. Today it encompasses the majors of Agricultural Business (preparing for agricultural finance and management), Business Economics, and Economics (for advanced studies in business or economics or for careers in financing, management, insurance, etc).

History
The Department of Economic Science was founded in 1898 under the Division of Industrial Science (later College of Liberal Arts and Sciences); it became co-directed by the Division of Agriculture in 1919. In 1910 it became the Department of Economics and Political Science. In 1913 it became the Department of Applied Economics and Social Science; in 1924 it became the Department of Economics, History, and Sociology; in 1931 it became the Department of Economics and Sociology. In 1967 it became the Department of Economics, and in 2007 it became co-directed by the Colleges of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Business.

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1898–present

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  • Department of Economic Science (1898–1910)
  • Department of Economics and Political Science (1910-1913)
  • Department of Applied Economics and Social Science (1913–1924)
  • Department of Economics, History and Sociology (1924–1931)
  • Department of Economics and Sociology (1931–1967)

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Economics
Abstract

This study uses an agent-based computational labor market framework to undertake a systematic experimental investigation of the relationship between job capacity, job concentration, and market power. Job capacity is measured by the ratio of total potential job openings to total potential work offers, and job concentration is measured by the ratio of work suppliers to employers. For each setting of the capacity and concentration treatment factors, work suppliers and employers repeatedly seek V- preferred worksite partners based on continually updated expected utility, engage in efficiency-wage worksite interactions mmodeledas prisoner's dilemma games, and evolve their worksite behaviors over time. The main finding is that job capacity consistently trumps job concentration when it comes to predicting the relative ability of work suppliers and employers to exercise market power. Controlling for job capacity, job concentration has only small unsystematic effects on attained market power levels.

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