Introduction to labor economics

This is an introductory textbook in labor economics, intended for upper division students (juniors or seniors) in liberal arts colleges or in profes sional schools of business administration, social service, or applied economics. It assumes that the student has had a course in economic prin ciples. Ideally, the student of labor problems should have had training in a number of the formal social disciplines, such as economic analysis, law, government, statistics, and sociology. On the other hand, labor questions receive such wide publicity and are the subject of so much discussion and controversy that the problem of vocabulary is minimized and many of the important issues are common knowledge. In addition, a considerable por tion of labor economics (as of all economics) is necessarily concerned with descriptive institutional material, for which only limited technical analysis is necessary. As a result, it is possible for students with slight backgrounds in the social studies to do good work, especially if their interest and applica tion are strong.

The distinguishing feature of labor economics is its heavy emphasis on policy. Since policy choices are related to issues, the major emphasis in this book will be to describe the principal labor issues and explain the methods of analysis which have been developed to handle them. It is well established that the study of labor, especially in its early stages, should be on a prob lem basis, since the questions raised will not in most cases yield to any single discipline (economics, law, sociology). To find reasonable answers to labor questions, it is necessary to use a variety of analytical methods and to weigh the outcomes-frequently in terms of highly subjective value preferences.