One of the important topics of ecological rationality is the way in which people search for good options out of a set of sequentially-presented possibilities. How can we make a good choice when we don't know what all the future options might be? One version of this problem arises when searching for jobs: From the seller's (prospective employee's) side, how can the decision be made for when to take a particular job offer, or when to hold out for a better future possibility? Similarly, from the buyer's (prospective employer's) side, how can one decide when a good-enough job candidate has been found and an offer should be made? In general, how do sellers and buyers become matched up in bargaining situations, how good is this matching process, and what (search) mechanisms can lead to such matching?

We decided to investigate these questions within the context of job search on the academic markets for both psychologists and economists. These two markets operate quite differently, so we gathered data about both to be able to compare their workings. We developed sets of questionnaires about the job search process from both seller (i.e. applicant) and buyer (i.e. department) perspectives. On the seller side, the questionnaires were sent to Ph.D. candidates (or recent Ph.D.s) in academic (non-clinical) psychology or academic economics (not agricultural economics, finance, or business administration) who were currently on the job market. On the buyer side, we sent questionnaires to all departments with junior academic faculty positions advertised in psychology and economics. All respondents in each of the four categories (psychology/economics buyers/sellers) were entered into a $1,000 lottery as incentive to participate. The study ran in the years 1999-2000 (for psychology) and 2000-2001 (for economics).

At the right we provide links to all of the questionnaires we used; for economics, because of the two-stage search process involving central conference meetings followed by on-site interviews, there are twice as many questionnaires (one for each stage). We also provide links to the collected answers from all participants for the last question on each questionnaire, asking "Assume that you had the power to change the interview and hiring process: what aspect(s) would you want to change and how?" We will add further summaries of our results to this site over time.

Peter M. Todd
Andreas Ortmann (CERGE-EI)

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