Labor Economic and Industrial Relations

by Kerr, Clark; Staudohar, Paul D.

• ISBN13: 9780674506411
• ISBN10: 0674506413
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1994-05-01
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

In twenty-three original essays this book surveys the course of labor economics over the more than two centuries since the publication of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. It fully examines the contending theories, changing environmental contexts, evolving issues, and varied policies affecting labor's participation in the economy.
Beginning with George P. Shultz, who provides the foreword, the contributors are among the most distinguished scholars in labor economics and industrial relations. These essays represent some of their finest work and apply the ideas for which they are best known. Highlights include John T. Dunlop on internal labor markets, John Kenneth Galbraith on power relationships in the economy, Robert M. Solow on explanation of unemployment, Jacob Mincer on human capital, Lloyd G. Reynolds on labor in developing countries, Richard A. Lester on wage differentials, Edward F. Denison on productivity, Richard Freeman on union/non-union differentials, F. Ray Marshall on human resource development, and Thomas A. Kochan on policy making.
While the intellectual framework of the book looks partly to the past - explaining the labor factor in classical and neoclassical systems - its emphasis is on contemporary problems that will figure prominently in future developments, such as the operation of internal labor markets, dispute resolution, concession bargaining, equal employment opportunity, and individual labor contracting. This book is required reading for students and scholars of labor economics.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Introduction: Labor in the Course of the Development of Economic Thought
Contributing Authors
The Labor Factor within the Classical and Neoclassical Systems of Economic Analysis	p. 3
Americanizing the Labor Problem: The Wisconsin School	p. 41
The Social Economics Revisionists: The "Real World" Study of Labor Markets and Institutions	p. 66
Human Capital: A Review	p. 109
The Evolution of Thought on the Competitive Nature of Labor Markets	p. 145
Wage Differentials and Minimum-Wage Effects	p. 189
Modeling Third World Labor Markets	p. 206
Occupational Wage Differentials	p. 224
On Labor's Bargaining Disadvantage	p. 237
Two (or Three) Ways of Thinking about Unemployment	p. 257
American Exceptionalism in the Labor Market: Union-Nonunion Differentials in the United States and Other Countries	p. 272
Internal Labor Markets: Theory and Change	p. 303
Managing the Workplace: From Markets to Manors, and Beyond	p. 340
Organizations and Human Resources: Internal and External Markets	p. 375
Explicit Individual Contracting in the Labor Market	p. 401
Countervailing Power: Memoir and Modern Reality	p. 431
A Decade of Concession Bargaining	p. 435
Changing Patterns in Dispute Resolution	p. 475
Unions: A Reorientation to Survive	p. 512
Productivity: Data and Determinants	p. 545
The Specter of Affirmative Action	p. 574
Organizations and Learning Systems for a High-Wage Economy	p. 601
Principles for a Post-New Deal Employment Policy	p. 646
Index	p. 673
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.