These hysteresis effects result in persistent heterogeneity in earnings and employment histories across agents who have no observable structural differences. These hysteresis effects may help to explain why excess earnings heterogeneity is commonly observed in real-world labor markets. Final version appears as pp. Evolutionary Programming VII , Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Conference on Evolutionary Programming, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1998. Illustrative computational experiments are reported and interpreted.
Final version appears as pp.
See the software section, below, for information regarding on-line TNG source code availability. Final version appears as pp. Preliminary computer experiments are reported which suggest that the standard optimality properties used to judge the desirability of matching mechanisms in static market contexts may be inadequate measures of optimality from an evolutionary perspective. Final version appears as pp. An accompanying readme file provides instructions regarding the downloading, unzipping, and running of the TNG Lab on a Microsoft windows desktop pc.