Research Summary
Research Summary
Shift Auctions
Description
Shift Auctions are a new labor-market institution, enabled by the internet, whereby workers bid for overtime shifts via descending auctions. The goal of shift auctions is to enable efficient and flexible utilization of a firms own human resources when staffing requirements are volatile and difficult to forecast.
The present research considers the potential efficiency gains from shift auctions and assesses the danger of collusion. This project is both theoretical and empirical, the latter using proprietary data from a leading shift-auctions software provider.