Dale T. Mortensen

Current research centers on the relationships between firm productivity, firm size, the distribution of wages, and worker flows among employers. He pioneered the theory of job search and search unemployment and extended it to the study of labor turnover, research and development, personal relationships, and labor reallocation. His insight, that friction is equivalent to the random arrival of trading partners, has become the leading technique for analysis of labor markets and the effects of labor market policy.