The Benefits of Full Employment: When Markets Work for People

by Bernstein, Jared; Baker, Dean

• ISBN13: 9781932066043
• ISBN10: 1932066047
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-06-01
• Publisher: Economic Policy Inst

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(4)
What is full employment?	5	(8)
The course of unemployment and wages over the last 50 years	7	(3)
Structural unemployment	10	(3)
How NAIRU became the enemy of full employment	13	(28)
The NAIRU theory	16	(2)
The evidence for the NAIRU	18	(2)
The time-varying NAIRU--a better explanation?	20	(1)
Reexamining the postwar era	21	(17)
The 1960s: low unemployment and rising inflation	22	(10)
The 1970s: oil shocks and high inflation	32	(2)
The 1980s: high unemployment and falling inflation	34	(2)
The 1990s: low unemployment and low inflation	36	(2)
Testing alternative explanations	38	(1)
Does low unemployment lead to rising inflation?	39	(2)
The benefits of full employment	41	(24)
The growth in wages	41	(4)
More jobs, better jobs	45	(9)
Unemployment vs. underemployment	50	(1)
Improvements in job quality	50	(4)
Income and poverty	54	(3)
Welfare reform	57	(2)
Crime	59	(2)
Competing explanations for these positive economic and social developments	61	(4)
A closer look at full employment and low-wage trends in the 1990s	65	(16)
The usual suspects: labor supply and demand, skill and demographics, labor market institutions, and productivity growth	65	(8)
Phillips curve wage regressions	73	(2)
The impact of low unemployment on the growth of low wages, 1995-2000	75	(6)
Getting back to full employment	81	(12)
The 1990s path to full employment	81	(2)
Economic bubbles and their role in the 1990s and 2000s	83	(4)
Deflating the bubbles and getting back on track	87	(6)
Appendix A: Regression analysis of factors associated with inflation	93	(6)
Appendix B: National wage curve regression estimates	99	(2)
Endnotes	101	(6)
Bibliography	107	(5)
About EPI	112