Drawing on insights from corporate finance and personnel economics, we show that firms consider potential employees using a real options approach, much as they do when making other types of capital investment decisions. Theoretically we find that firms’ hiring decisions are influenced by the...

This paper proposes and tests empirically a model of optimal job search using novel data on job seeking strategies of participants in the labor market for MBA graduates. Theoretically and empirically I find that the breadth of search that workers conduct depends on their ability, outside option,...