Economics of Wage Determination

ISBN-13: 9783540523246 / Angielski / Miękka / 1990 / 373 str.

Heinz Kanig

Opis

Heinz Konig This volume contains fourteen papers, all except one were presented and discussed at an international seminar of the Sonderforschungsbereich 5, University Mannheim, on October 5th-7th, 1987. While the planned overall theme was originally limited to the problems of wage determination in their relation to unemployment, the papers presented cover a much broader field and treat the problems from a microeconomic as well as from a macroeconomic perspective. It was this mixture of methodological approaches which, at least in my mind, stimulated the discussion and have documented the advances in labor market and macroeconomic theory in recent years. Rising and persistently high unemployment rates in western countries since the mid 70's reshifted the economists' attention to the role of wages with respect to labor supply and demand. Most markets seem to clear, yet the labor market does not. Macro- economic thinking in the 50's and 60's, following the Keynesian paradigm, attributed this missing "self-correction"-property to the rigidity of nominal wages. However, it was soon recognized that wages could be rigid without any implications for macroeconomic adjustment. As long as profits are sufficiently flexible, rigid wages do not prevent prices from reacting to fluctuations in nominal demand. Furthermore, it is less the nominal wage stickiness than the real wage rigidity which impedes market clearing. Most neo-Keynesian theories in recent years, therefore, try, given rational behavior of economic agents, to disentangle factors which are responsible for real rigidities in labor markets as well as in product markets.

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Spis treści

U. S. Inflation, Labor’s Share, and the Natural Rate of Unemployment.- Comment.- Wage Determination in Japan. A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation.- Comment.- Wage Component Behaviour in Japanese Manufacturing Industries.- Comment.- Efficiency Wage Contracts, Worksharing, and West German Unemployment.- Comment.- Sectoral Wage Patterns, Individual Earnings and the Efficiency Wage Hypothesis.- Comment.- The Efficiency Wage Theories and Inter-Industry Wage Differentials. An Empirical Investigation for the Manufacturing Sector of the Federal Republic of Germany.- Comment.- A Critique of a Custom in Labor Economics.- Comment.- Contract Theory and Involuntary Underemployment. A Review.- Comment.- Disturbances and Wages. A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis for the FRG.- Comment.- Wages and the Quantity and Quality of Labor.- Comment.- A Model of Job Choice, Labour Supply and Wages.- Comment.- Unemployment and the Labour Supply of Married Women.- Comment.- Wages and Unemployment. A Microeconometric Analysis for the FRG.- Comment.- Housing, Wages and U.K. Labour Markets.- Comment.

O autorze

The volume focuses on major theories of wage determination like the efficiency wage theories and the contract theory. The empirically oriented papers concentrate on the wage determination process in Europe, Japan and the United States and provide insights into the validity of the wage determination theories for these countries. The role of non-monetary benefits from work as well as search of labor supply are further important topics covered by the volume.