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.
444
questions
116
votes
16
answers
21k
views
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 ...
- 1,353
32
votes
3
answers
5k
views
What has caused the recent 25% unemployment rate in Spain?
The unemployment rate in Spain has recently been fluctuating around 25%.
What has caused this?
- 579
22
votes
3
answers
3k
views
Why is collective bargaining by a group of employees not the same thing as price-fixing?
Employees sell their labor for wages. If a critical mass of employees get together and demand higher wages, how is this not the same thing as a critical mass of merchants illegally fixing the price of ...
- 447
22
votes
5
answers
8k
views
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 ...
- 2,888
20
votes
5
answers
2k
views
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 ...
- 9,355
19
votes
5
answers
3k
views
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 ...
- 17k
18
votes
3
answers
5k
views
Why do wages not equalize across space?
In standard economic theory wages are simply prices on the labor market determined in equilibrium by the supply and demand of labor. Looking across space within countries it is however standard to ...
- 3,798
16
votes
3
answers
90k
views
What is the difference between intensive margin and extensive margin in labor economics?
What is the difference between intensive margin and extensive margin in labor economics, or general RBC model, where we talk about labor-hours supplied changing with extensive margin or intensive ...
- 231
14
votes
2
answers
2k
views
What is the difference between contract theory and mechanism design?
Can someone explain the difference between contract theory and mechanism design?
- 141
11
votes
3
answers
2k
views
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 (...
- 9,355
10
votes
2
answers
2k
views
Why does immigration boost the economy? (or does it not...?)
I'm a novice at macroeconomics, and trying to understand the effect of immigration (from developing nations) on the economy of a developed nation. Specifically, I am considering the effect when the ...
- 255
10
votes
1
answer
762
views
What are the economic perspectives regarding the game of salary negotiations?
Apologies if I use non-economic language to explain what I suspect is a practical application of economics. I have no formal education in economics whatsoever but hoping you guys/girls might be able ...
- 203
9
votes
2
answers
5k
views
Does recycling lead to fewer jobs?
Say I buy a glass bottle, I can either put it in the landfill or recycle it.
My understanding is, glass will breakdown into sand. (Not sure how well though, since we sometimes find glass from Roman ...
- 285
9
votes
5
answers
672
views
Lack of skilled IT workforce, but they do not raise wages
In my country, Portugal, many IT companies are always complaining in media regarding the lack of skilled IT workforce, but they do not raise wages. We have statistical data from the government that ...
- 191
9
votes
2
answers
211
views
Whatever happened to efficiency wage theories?
Older macroeconomics texts give much space to efficiency wage explanations of how unemployment could coexist with wages in equilibrium higher than the reservation wage of workers.
However, there ...
- 1,135
9
votes
2
answers
10k
views
Bartik Instrument Intuition
I have a question regarding the Bartik Instrument.
I understand that this instrument is a particularly important tool that is used in labor economics. From my understanding, this instrument attempts ...
- 1,633
9
votes
1
answer
439
views
Local and Central Wage Bargaining: What Is the Difference?
Consider the following setting:
Profit maximizing firms with production functions $\Pi(w,L)$, where $w$ is the wage and $L$ is employment.
Unions who want to maximize the expected utility of their ...
- 983
9
votes
0
answers
149
views
Why aren't there more super-stars in educational content delivery?
The super-star phenomena seems to happen in any field where the marginal cost of distribution is very low. I think teaching could be that way just as much as acting or playing basketball - at least as ...
user4207
8
votes
6
answers
2k
views
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)?
- 10.7k
8
votes
1
answer
2k
views
Why is the percentage of Australian businesses that don't have any employees so high?
I'm trying to understand this Australian Bureau of Statistics release, which says:
In June 2014, 61% of actively trading businesses in Australia had no
employees, 27% had 1-4, 10% had 5-19, 2% ...
- 183
8
votes
4
answers
1k
views
Effect of minimum wage on higher levels of pay
Suppose the minimum wage increases to \$$x$. Is there any evidence on the effect (if any) this is likely to have upon the wage profile of workers higher in the hierarchy, who are already paid more ...
- 17k
8
votes
3
answers
214
views
When and why women left the labour market?
It is well documented that women in now developed countries entered the labour market all thoughout the 20th century. As such, female labour participation have consistently increased. For example, ...
- 8,611
8
votes
4
answers
276
views
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 ...
- 273
8
votes
1
answer
185
views
Does Craigslist Reduce Unemployment?
If a substantial (though admittedly I have no idea how large) part of the natural rate of unemployment is caused by the job search, do more efficient means of communication create more efficient labor ...
- 3,555
8
votes
4
answers
298
views
Can higher working hours reduce productivity?
Are there studies about the impact on per-hour output (productivity) of increasing the number of hours worked each week by employees? If every employee works 3hrs/week longer (from 41 to 44hrs), does ...
- 181
8
votes
2
answers
300
views
Differentiation of the value function in Burdett Mortensen (1998)
I'm currently making my way through Burdett and Mortensen's classic paper of on the job search. What should be an easy task of finding an expression for the reservation wage is made slightly more ...
- 199
8
votes
1
answer
155
views
Lab experiments of labour markets
I have been searching for papers that conduct lab experiments simulating a labour market, that means for a minimum there are both participants taking the role of firms, and participants taking the ...
- 1,898
7
votes
5
answers
1k
views
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.
...
- 2,888
7
votes
2
answers
122
views
How can median wages be significantly different in two neighboring countries with open borders?
As an example, take Germany and Czech Republic. Both are members of the EU and therefore trade barriers between the two countries are minimal. However the median salary in Germany is nearly 3 times as ...
- 518
7
votes
3
answers
186
views
Why don't prices of USA labor and Mexican labor equalise?
That Mexicans workers get paid less US workers is a dynamic which motivates the moving of production to Mexico. This idea can be abstracted to Developed Markets (DM) labor and Emerging Markets (EM) ...
- 223
7
votes
3
answers
869
views
Why did creating the Eurozone cause the cost of labor to rise in Greece?
As I understand the implementation of the Euro as a common currency caused labor prices to spike in certain countries, Greece being one of them. Why did this happen? Why did it affect certain ...
- 211
7
votes
1
answer
115
views
Testing Roberts's Law: data request on CEO pay and company characteristics
I posted here regarding sources for Roberts's Law.
In this paper it gives a clear qualification of what Roberts's law is. (Page 9, ...Cross-sectional prediction..)
..In a given year, the ...
- 8,487
6
votes
2
answers
136
views
Minimum Wage effects on Adjacent Cities
When a city like Seattle raises the minimum wage to 15/hr, how does it affect the labor market in adjacent cities?
Are there examples, studies or accepted practices to address: Difficulty staffing ...
- 63
6
votes
2
answers
418
views
Unemployment and the Frisch-Elasticity
There is the long debate on the Frisch-Elasticity being the driver of unemployment over the business cycle.
One argument against the voluntary-unemployment mechanism of RBC models is that if we ...
- 10.7k
6
votes
1
answer
645
views
Why has increased productivity over the last 100 years not affected how much people work?
If we are generally richer and more productive due to better technology and other factors, why do we still work so much?
I understand that there are various incentives to work (e.g. implicit status ...
- 163
6
votes
4
answers
196
views
What kind of utility function is needed to derive a "Backwards Bending Labor Supply Curve"
The idea of a backwards bending labor supply curve is often discussed in many introductory labor economics classes where a consumer's labor leisure decision at higher wages (due to a diminishing ...
- 8,487
6
votes
2
answers
946
views
Why life expectance is growing faster than retirement age? - source needed
Need sources of information about "Why is life expectancy growing faster than retirement age?"
Is there any literature about "why the increased quality of life and medicine in rich countries doesn’t ...
- 163
6
votes
6
answers
573
views
Reconciling low wages with high technology and high education
This is one example of many recent doom storied prognosticating that the "millennial" generation will be the first in (recent) history to experience lower incomes than their predecessors—at least in ...
- 17k
6
votes
1
answer
100
views
Distribution of Wages
Is there any paper that looks at the distribution of wages? I'd like to see how many workers are in each percentile of labor income. I know that you could compute it using CPS or US tax data, but I ...
- 10.7k
6
votes
1
answer
109
views
Doraszelski and Jaumandreu (2018) Intuition
Doraszelski and Jaumandreu (2018) estimate a CES production function with two forms of productivity shocks (1) labor augmenting and (2) Hicks neutral. They claim that the increase in labor augmenting ...
- 3,768
6
votes
1
answer
104
views
What are the economic drivers of urbanisation?
It is regularly argued that urbanisation drives economic growth (e.g. here).
I wonder which are the drivers that lead to urbanisation in the first place?
I believe the historical case of the ...
- 841
6
votes
1
answer
328
views
Are there any studies that show that "Affirmative Action" hurts the economy?
Are there any studies that show that "Affirmative Action" (an action or policy favoring those who tend to suffer from discrimination, especially in relation to employment or education) hurts the ...
- 2,888
6
votes
1
answer
116
views
Geographic mobility of workers within Germany, as compared to within the US?
Martin Feldstein (1997, p. 36) claims that workers within the US are more geographically mobile than say within Germany. I had known that US workers were mobile. But one sentence of his seems a bit ...
user18
6
votes
1
answer
376
views
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:
$$ \frac{\partial(1-...
- 10.7k
6
votes
1
answer
154
views
The decline in the number of domestic servants
does it mean that the market mechanism does not work—that the offer
of the going rate of wages does not secure a servant because servants
do not move to the highest bidder? This complaint—which would
...
- 29.6k
6
votes
1
answer
407
views
The Shapiro-Stiglitz model. Why under full employment do unemployed workers find jobs instantly?
Under the Shapiro-Stiglitz model the No-Shirking Condition is:
$$w=\bar{e}+\left( \rho +\frac{\bar{L}}{\bar{L}-NL}b \right)\frac{\bar{e}}{q}$$
Where:
$\bar{e}=$ exerted effort by employees
$\rho=$ ...
- 889
6
votes
2
answers
176
views
Has Stack Overflow been economically beneficial to programmer productivity?
Has Stack Overflow an overall positive impact on programmers productivity?
On one side, it takes time and effort to ask and answer questions -- thus decreasing productivity.
On the other side, ...
- 161
6
votes
1
answer
292
views
Labour markets and supply-side policies: too much stress put on the WS push factors?
In reading several macro textbooks, it seems that most of the supply-side policies tend to be focused on the labour supply side (wage setting curve), instead on the firm/labour demand side(price ...
- 5,109
6
votes
0
answers
42
views
Do Human Resources use information on applicants' child rearing effort as a signal
In Spence's Job Market Signaling paper (a non-paywalled version is available here) firms observe applicants' educational investment. From these signals the firms glean information on the "type&...
- 29.6k
5
votes
5
answers
1k
views
What determines whether slavery is economically efficient in industrialized/modern era economies?
Various forms of slavery were nearly universal before the industrial revolution. After industrialization, it would naively seem forced labor would continue to be widespread, as there is no way to ...
- 151