Equilibrium unemployment with wage posting: Burdett-Mortensen meet pissarides

The wage posting approach to search equilibrium is incorporated into the equilibrium unemployment approach in the paper. The unique equilibrium to the wage posting game analyzed is a distribution of wage offers of the same functional form as that originally derived by Burdett and Mortensen (1998). The synthesis is extended by allowing for match specific investment by employers. The outcome is endogeneous productivity differences across jobs that are induced by equilibrium wage offer differences. Contrary to the original Burdett-Mortensen solution, the equilibrium wage offers distribution can be unimodal with a long right tail when match-specific investments are included.