Labor Economics ─ Principles in Practice

It is impossible to read a newspaper or watch the evening news without encountering at least one story about unemployment, layoffs, the minimum wage, or employment discrimination. Labor markets affect us all in important ways.Labor Economics: Principles in Practice lays out an analytical framework for thinking about issues and policies related to labor markets. Current textbooks in labor economics cover all the main topics of the field, provide numerous applications of economic models, and connect to empirical research at the cutting edge of the profession. But they are not written to help students learn. This is the first Labor Economics text to apply a clear pedagogical approach to the study of labor economics. Labor Economics: Principles in Practice provides a tightly integrated tour of labor economics by:

1. Focusing on Core Principles, keeping the economic models as simple as possible to deliver key predictions and explanations.

2. Embedding the Applications in the main narrative, and using them to illustrate the major concepts and not in boxed examples.

3.· Immersing Students in the Data by using the Current Population Survey (CPS) throughout to connect students to research and to integrate the topics. Once students are familiar with the CPS in general and the occupation averages in particular, grouping data in other ways (e.g., by state) can be accomplished without long digressions or leaps of faith.

4. Emphasizing the Big Picture to get to interesting questions such as: Are labor markets efficient? Are workers paid what they are worth? What factors enhance efficiency and reduce or eliminate exploitation of workers?

The text content includes some unique methods of presentation such as a self-contained and thorough presentation of labor and demand and labor supply curves in Chapter 2 before the formal derivations of labor supply and labor demands in Chapters 3 and 4. Advanced material is clearly identified within the narrative so it is easy to skip without loss of continuity.

Kenneth J. McLaughlin is an Associate Professor and master teacher of microeconomics and labor economics at City University of New York. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago and has taught at the University of Rochester, University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business, and Columbia University.