Description
Contemporary Labor Economics, 7e presents the "new" labor economics. In the past, study of labor was highly descriptive, emphasizing historical developments, facts, institutions, and legal considerations. Labor markets and unemployment was accorded some attention, but the analysis was typically minimal. This state of affairs has changed significantly in recent decades. Economists have achieved important breakthroughs in studying labor markets and problems. Labor economics is increasingly an applied field of micro and macro theory and has become a critical part of the core of analytical economics. As a result, the focus of the text is on the “new” labor economics. However, it also presents traditional topics such as labor law, structure of unions, and collective bargaining since these issues also play an important role in labor markets.
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This undergraduate textbook by McConnell (University of Nebraska), Brue (Pacific Lutheran University) and Macpherson (Florida State University) focuses attention on labor economics as an applied area of both micro and macro economic theory. It is along these lines that the text divides its discussion of labor as commodity, first through looking at the way labor supply and demand work together to determine wage rates, structure, and types and composition of pay, then by discussing how this affects the distribution of earnings, labor productivity, and levels of employment. This seventh edition offers new topics involving issues of public policy such as immigration, outsourcing, living wages, earnings mobility, downsizing, income tax credits, overtime pay, and pension plans. New discussions are also included on the monopoly union and efficient contracts model of union behavior and the accident and asymmetrical information models of strikes. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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