Questions tagged [labor-economics]
Labor economics is the branch of microeconomics that studies labor markets and its peculiarities. Labor economists usually study topics such as career choice, returns to schooling, determinants of labor productivity, wages, gender and racial gaps.
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How will non-rich citizens make a living if jobs keep getting replaced by robots and are outsourced?
Decades ago a factory job could support a wife and kids until retirement and they offered insurance, benefits, etc. Now, no more unions, those jobs as well as tech and customer service jobs are ...
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Have automation and technological advance been shown to have a positive impact on society and the economy or a negative one?
My friends and I, 2 of which are computer science majors think it is worse because is humans can't work and thus afford necessities, how will they survive? The definition of automation: the use of ...
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Unemployment and the Minimum Wage---what are the main counter-arguments to Card and Krueger?
Card and Krueger's paper (AER 1994, "Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania") uses a difference-in-difference identification strategy to ...
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Why are real median household incomes stagnant?
This image shows US real median household income.
It seems remarkable for its lack of growth over the last 20 years. This has been the subject of much political debate (around the "1%" and "occupy ...
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Stimulus Effect of the Minimum Wage
In the question about the minimum wage found here, I have heard several times that an increase in the minimum wage can, as one of several competing effects, "boost the economy" by increasing the ...
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Maximized tax revenue & foreign labor
I'm dealing with a tricky assignment, and I have no idea of where to begin.
Person 1 lives in Denmark and has a utility function given by,
$$(1) \ \ u(c,l)=c-\frac{\eta}{\eta+1}(24-l)^{\frac{\eta+1}{\...
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How do Marxist economists solve the Diamond-Water Paradox?
For class surveying different economic systems, I read a book on Marxism and its core beliefs. As I read, I came to learn that the Marxist view of economics depends heavily on the Labor Theory of ...
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Under what conditions is a monopoly undesirable?
First of all, I realize that "undesirable" is an ambiguous term. So, to clarify, when is a monopoly undesirable under the following metrics?
Pareto efficiency
Reduces consumer surplus
Social Welfare (...
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Can absence of inflation be accounted for by a reconfigured class structure?
A previous and oft-heard question asked why no inflation results from the Fed pumping money into the economy.
Are we simply seeing a methodical wage suppression, thus no official "inflation," while ...
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Has the natural rate of unemployment decreased with modern travel and the Internet?
The natural rate of unemployment is a combination of structural unemployment and frictional unemployment.
Structural unemployment is caused by a surplus of labor at a given wage in a given area.
...
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Graduate Level Textbook on Labor Economics and Macro-Labor
What would be good textbooks at the graduate level that deal with Labor Economics and Labor-Macro (As in, Equilibrium Unemployment Theory, Shimer Puzzle etc)?
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Generalized KPR: Frisch Elasticity
Consider the following version of KPR preferences (with $l$ being leisure):
$$ U(c,l) = \left(\left(c\right)^\gamma l^\omega\right)^{1-\sigma}$$
I'm after the Frisch elasticity:
$$ \frac{\partial(1-...
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Labour Saving vs. Labour Augmenting - what is the difference?
It seems reasonable to say that technology generally increases output per unit of labour. Therefore in any factory which has installed new technology one can reasonably expect that for the same ...
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Why is sugar cane still harvested manually in Brazil?
I read that up to 70% of Brazil's sugar cane in the Sao Paulo area is still harvested manually. Some workers are paid $1.50 per tonne. Why is it still being cut manually? Some possibilities:
(1) farm ...
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Empirical Data on Demand for Minimum-Wage Jobs in the USA
The idea of a minimum wage and its effects in terms of supply and demand are well-known in mainstream economic theory.
I'm constructing an argument regarding the minimum wage, and what I'm curious ...
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What is being meant by "cohort-specific fixed effect for each state of birth" in Card&Krueger(1992)? What does the following equation mean?
I am referring to this paper on school quality and returns to schooling. The econometric specification has been described by eqn (1) on page 4.
The authors have taken "cohort specific fixed ...
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Cobb-Douglas production function, given $w$ get $r$ regardless of input levels. Why?
There is a market economy with technology given by:
$$Y = K^\alpha L^{1-\alpha} \tag{1}$$
Firms behave competitively and input prices are:
$$r = \alpha K^{\alpha-1}L^{1-\alpha} = \alpha(\frac{L}{K})...
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King-Plosser-Rebello Preferences: Scale leisure
KPR preferences are given by
$$ U(c, l) = \frac{\left(cv(l)\right)^{1-\sigma}-1}{1-\sigma}$$
with concave increasing $v$ and $c$, $l$ denoting consumption and leisure. In the limiting case of $\...
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Does working abroad cause less unemployment? Or is it actually harmful (directly or opportunity cost)?
This question is from subjective origins but is (supposed to be) objective.
The context of this question arises from people in third world countries going abroad to work. Often they are seen as money-...
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Cyclicality of Real Wages? Counter, pro or acyclical?
Is the real wage counter or pro- cyclical? I've read in some textbooks that the real wage is mildly pro-cyclical, but I've also found some papers stating that it's acyclical.
So, which is it? Also, ...
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Is the study of the volunteer sector inappropriate for a labour economist?
In the basics of labour economics the driving factor for increase in labour supply (for the workers in a given market) is increase in wages.
The volunteer sector consists of general and skilled ...
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Job search theory in discrete time
Let us assume that there is a labor who lives in discrete time universe and discounts future payoffs with the discount factor $b\in (0,1)$.
And we assume that this labor is at period $t=0$ at first. ...
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