题目：Acceptance Deadlines and Job Offer Design

主讲人：赵昕

时间：2023年11月10日 14:00-15:30

地点：励耘楼B312

摘要：This paper studies talent recruiting in an incomplete-information environment with the acceptance deadline of an employer’s job offer being a strategic recruiting device. When the terms of employment are invariable, increasing the acceptance deadline raises the chance of the employer hiring candidates with more promising outside options, but reduces the probability of hiring those with less promising alternatives. The employer is more likely to choose extreme deadlines, i.e., extend exploding offers, which require immediate responses, and open offers, which have the longest deadline, when the candidate is more willing to postpone his acceptance decision. Committing herself to a firm deadline is not optimal for the employer; allowing requests for a deadline extension benefits the two parties. When incorporating the acceptance deadline into the design of the job offer, the optimal design for the employer can be implemented using a “bonus-for-early-acceptance” (BFEA) mechanism, which is widely applied in practice. In a BFEA mechanism, the employer (1) specifies a date that her offer expires and (2) provides a salary bonus for accepting the offer, which is decreasing over time before the offer expires. A candidate anticipating a better outside option takes a longer time to respond and receives a lower bonus. Our result indicates that different BFEA mechanisms adopted in various real-world labor markets reflect the level of competition faced by employers.

本文研究不完全信息环境下的企业人才招聘问题。在此问题中，招聘企业为其录用通知（Job Offer）所设定的答复期限（Acceptance Deadline）被当作一个策略性招聘工具。当录用通知中的其他雇佣条款不能改变时，设定较长的答复期限可以增加企业招聘到就业前景更为乐观的应聘者的概率，降低招聘到就业前景较不乐观的应聘者的概率。本文发现，当应聘者更加倾向于推迟答复录用通知时，招聘企业会更有可能设定极端的答复期限，也就是企业会更有可能发放要求即时答复的短期终止要约（Exploding Offer）或者给予应聘者足够考虑时间的开放性要约（Open Offer）。完全承诺于一个不可调整的答复期限不是最优的；允许应聘者申请推迟答复期限对于招聘双方都更有利。当企业可以随意设计雇佣合同并把答复期限纳入到录用通知的设计时，本文证明企业最优的录用通知发放机制即为现实中普遍采用的“早接受-多奖励（Bonus-for-Early-Acceptance）”（BFEA）机制。在一个BFEA机制下，招聘企业会设定（1）一个最终答复日期和（2）一个随着答复时间的推迟而不断降低的签约奖金。在此机制下，就业前景较好的应聘者接受录用通知的时间会更晚，收到的签约奖金更低。本文的分析结果还进一步表明，不同招聘市场中使用的BFEA机制的差异体现了招聘企业在这些市场中面对的竞争程度的差异。

个人简介：赵昕为对外经济贸易大学国经济贸易学院助理教授。他于2016年获得多伦多大学经济学博士学位。在加入对外经济贸易大学前，他于2016-2020年在悉尼科技大学从事博士后研究工作。他的主要研究领域为微观经济学理论、政治经济学以及行为/实验经济学,研究成果已发表于RAND Journal of Economics, Canadian Journal of Economics, Journal of Regulatory Economics等期刊，另有研究论文收到Games and Economics Behavior和International Economic Review的返修邀请。