Search and Match: Theory and Applications

In this course we will study economic markets through the lens of matching and search. Many markets depend on how individuals find and match with one another, including buyers and sellers, employers and workers, and students and schools. In the first half of the course we will study two-sided matching theory, including topics such as transferable vs. non-transferable utility and the Gale-Shapley theorem, with applications to areas such as school choice, marriage markets, and organ donation. In the second half we will examine job search through models of wage posting, bargaining, and directed search. Students will also gain experience using MATLAB to build and analyze simple search models, providing an introduction to the tools economists use to study markets with frictions. (ECON 0150 and ECON 0155)