ABSTRACT
Sellers, who want jobs and who want to please, can be quite adaptable in presenting their interests and qualifications. This is facilitated by the fact that their reputations are strictly local. Thus, as buyers do not define their needs in such a way as to find the most skillful candidates, and as sellers can suggest that they are something they are not, the academic labor market for teachers is, at most, nominal. The labor market for those who teach and do research is markedly different. There is a distinct labor market in every discipline for those whose academic work involves research in addition to teaching; the labor market for those who teach and do not do research is more inchoate. Fewer openings for college teachers are announced in disciplinary or professional publications than in publications with a more general readership, such as urban newspapers or the Chronicle of Higher Education.
