Table of Contents 1 Personnel economics and non-competitive labour markets 1 2 The optimal skill ratio 11 3 The hours-employment trade-off 27 4 Temporary or permanent? 45 5 Managing adverse selection in recruiting 62 6 Optimal compensation schemes : foundation 82 7 Pay for performance with wage constraints 107 8 Relative compensation and efficiency wage 132 9 Training and human capital investment 152 10 Training investment in imperfect labour markets 171 11 Job destruction 187 12 Further issues in employment protection legislation 202 13 Teams of group incentives 218 App. A Labour demand at the firm level 232 App. B Constrained optimization 238.
Most labor economics textbooks pay little attention to actual labor markets, taking as reference a perfectly competitive market in which losing a job is not a big deal. The Economics of Imperfect Labor Markets is the only textbook to focus on imperfect labor markets and to provide a systematic framework for analyzing how labor market institutions operate. This expanded, updated, and thoroughly revised second edition includes a new chapter on labor-market discrimination; quantitative examples; data and programming files enabling users to replicate key results of the literature; exercises at the end of each chapter; and expanded technical appendixes. The Economics of Imperfect Labor Markets examines the many institutions that affect the behavior of workers and employers in imperfect labor markets. These include minimum wages, employment protection legislation, unemployment benefits, active labor market policies, working-time regulations, family policies, equal opportunity legislation, collective bargaining, early retirement programs, education and migration policies, payroll taxes, and employment-conditional incentives. Written for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students, the book carefully defines and measures these institutions to accurately characterize their effects, and discusses how these institutions are today being changed by political and economic forces. Expanded, thoroughly revised second edition New chapter on labor-market discrimination New quantitative examples New data sets enabling users to replicate key results of the literature New end-of-chapter exercises Expanded technical appendixes Unique focus on institutions in imperfect labor markets Integrated framework and systematic coverage Self-contained chapters on each of the most important labor-market institutions
What happens if an employer cuts wages by one cent? Much of labor economics is built on the assumption that all the workers will quit immediately. Here, Alan Manning mounts a systematic challenge to the standard model of perfect competition. Monopsony in Motion stands apart by analyzing labor markets from the real-world perspective that employers have significant market (or monopsony) power over their workers. Arguing that this power derives from frictions in the labor market that make it time-consuming and costly for workers to change jobs, Manning re-examines much of labor economics based on this alternative and equally plausible assumption. The book addresses the theoretical implications of monopsony and presents a wealth of empirical evidence. Our understanding of the distribution of wages, unemployment, and human capital can all be improved by recognizing that employers have some monopsony power over their workers. Also considered are policy issues including the minimum wage, equal pay legislation, and caps on working hours. In a monopsonistic labor market, concludes Manning, the "free" market can no longer be sustained as an ideal and labor economists need to be more open-minded in their evaluation of labor market policies. Monopsony in Motion will represent for some a new fundamental text in the advanced study of labor economics, and for others, an invaluable alternative perspective that henceforth must be taken into account in any serious consideration of the subject.
Personnel economics, the use of economics for studying human resource issues, is becoming a standard course in business and economics departments around the world. Indeed, after being successfully introduced in North American business schools, the teaching of personnel economics is now growing in Europe and in the rest of the world. Yet, most of the traditional analysis of personnel economics assumes a perfectly competitive labour market, a situation in which wages are fully flexible and dismissals can take place at no cost. Such a setting is inappropriate for most European markets, where wage rigidity and wage compression are widespread phenomena, and where employment protection legislation is very stringent. Personnel Economics in Imperfect Labour Markets aims to describe key personnel issues when firms and human resource managers act in highly regulated labour markets. Written to be accessible to students, the book provides original answers to questions which have previously been left to specialized academic journals. Should hiring take place under temporary or permanent contracts? How can we provide compensation related incentives when minimum wages are binding? How de we solve the employment/hours trade-off? These questions and more are discussed within the text.
This innovative text grounds the economic analysis of labor markets and employment relationships in a unified theoretical treatment of labor exchange conditions. In addition to providing thorough coverage of standard topics including labor supply and demand, human capital theory, and compensating wage differentials, the text draws on game theory and the economics of information to study the implications of key departures from perfectly competitive labor market conditions. Analytical results are consistently applied to contemporary policy issues and empirical debates. Provides a coherent theoretical framework for the analysis of labor market phenomena Features graphical in-chapter analysis supplemented by technical material in appendices Incorporates numerous end-of-chapter questions that engage the analysis and anticipate subsequent results Includes innovative chapters on employee compensation methods, market segmentation, income inequality and labor market dynamics Balances theoretical, empirical and policy analysis
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Internet and Network Economics, WINE 2010, held in Stanford, USA, in December 2010. The 52 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 95 submissions. The papers are organized in 33 regular papers and 19 short papers.
(E-book available via MyiLibrary) In even the most market-oriented economies, most economic transactions occur not in markets but inside managed organizations, particularly business firms. Organizational economics seeks to understand the nature and workings of such organizations and their impact on economic performance. The Handbook of Organizational Economics surveys the major theories, evidence, and methods used in the field. It displays the breadth of topics in organizational economics, including the roles of individuals and groups in organizations, organizational structures and processes, the boundaries of the firm, contracts between and within firms, and more.
An authoritative textbook based on the legendary economics course taught at the University of Chicago Price theory is a powerful analytical toolkit for measuring, explaining, and predicting human behavior in the marketplace. This incisive textbook provides an essential introduction to the subject, offering a diverse array of practical methods that empower students to learn by doing. Based on Economics 301, the legendary PhD course taught at the University of Chicago, the book emphasizes the importance of applying price theory in order to master its concepts. Chicago Price Theory features immersive chapter-length examples such as addictive goods, urban-property pricing, the consequences of prohibition, the value of a statistical life, and occupational choice. It looks at human behavior in the aggregate of an industry, region, or demographic group, but also provides models of individuals when they offer insights about the aggregate. The book explains the surprising answers that price theory can provide to practical questions about taxation, education, the housing market, government subsidies, and much more. Emphasizes the application of price theory, enabling students to learn by doing Features chapter-length examples such as addictive goods, urban-property pricing, the consequences of prohibition, and the value of a statistical life Supported by video lectures taught by Kevin M. Murphy and Gary Becker The video course enables students to learn the theory at home and practice the applications in the classroom
How do the benefits of higher education compare with its costs, and how does this comparison vary across individuals and institutions? These questions are fundamental to quantifying the productivity of the education sector. The studies in Productivity in Higher Education use rich and novel administrative data, modern econometric methods, and careful institutional analysis to explore productivity issues. The authors examine the returns to undergraduate education, differences in costs by major, the productivity of for-profit schools, the productivity of various types of faculty and of outcomes, the effects of online education on the higher education market, and the ways in which the productivity of different institutions responds to market forces. The analyses recognize five key challenges to assessing productivity in higher education: the potential for multiple student outcomes in terms of skills, earnings, invention, and employment; the fact that colleges and universities are “multiproduct” firms that conduct varied activities across many domains; the fact that students select which school to attend based in part on their aptitude; the difficulty of attributing outcomes to individual institutions when students attend more than one; and the possibility that some of the benefits of higher education may arise from the system as a whole rather than from a single institution. The findings and the approaches illustrated can facilitate decision-making processes in higher education.
