A Search Model with a Quasi-Network

Abstract

In a standard search model the expected duration of unemployment is independent of the duration of previous employment, as well as of the current length of the unemployment spell. This paper offers a network mechanism to generate these correlations. Here, employed workers invest in social contacts with other employed workers, which will help them find jobs in the event of unemployment. These social contacts depreciate because they can also become unemployed and unemployed contacts are assumed to be useless. In this model the longer you have been working, the more contacts you are likely to have, and the more contacts you have the shorter your expected unemployment duration will be. The model is a simple and tractable way of introducing network ideas in one of the workhorses of labour and macroeconomics. In the model the network is eroded during periods of high unemployment, and is therefore less productive in an absolute sense. Nevertheless, the number of job finders per contact in the unemployment pool increases during periods of high unemployment. Finally, the model provides guidance for indirect inference of network effects from the data.