First published in book form in 1981, this collection of essays originally written between 1955 and 1966 contains ground-breaking research and analysis on the study of wages and prices across seven centuries, with particular reference to builder’s wage rates and the price of a bundle of the commodities on which these wages might be spent. These seminal contributions to the economics of labour and economic growth did much to fuel the debate surrounding the problems of inflation, stability and changes in the purchasing power of money upon the book’s initial publication. These concerns are every bit as relevant in today’s post credit-crunch society and this reissue will be welcomed by all students of economic history and labour economics.

First published in book form in 1981, this collection of essays originally written between 1955 and 1966 contains ground-breaking research and analysis on the study of wages and prices across seven centuries, with particular reference to builder’s wage rates and the price of a bundle of the commodities on which these wages might be spent. These seminal contributions to the economics of labour and economic growth did much to fuel the debate surrounding the problems of inflation, stability and changes in the purchasing power of money upon the book’s initial publication. These concerns are every bit as relevant in today’s post credit-crunch society and this reissue will be welcomed by all students of economic history and labour economics.

Throughout the OECD, 30% of the average firm’s total labour costs comprises items which are other than direct remuneration. This reissue, first published in 1984, focuses upon these non-wage labour costs, which include; fringe-benefit payments, obligatory social-welfare contributions, holiday entitlements and expenditures on recruitment and training, seeking to make amends for the woeful lack of consideration given to these important factors in previous wage literature. The book focuses on two major areas of enquiry: firstly, the costs for the cyclical behaviour of employment, and secondly, the role of average working hours per employee in the firm’s overall allocation of labour services. The author begins with an empirical survey and costs breakdown, followed by extensive data on Japan, the UK, the USA and West Germany. The ensuing analysis considers the question as to why firms incur the various non-wages, and a comparative static factor demand model is constructed, which accommodates the major cost items.

This reissue, first published in 1982, is the first of two volumes on the causes and cure of Stagflation - the two-headed monster that combines mass unemployment with rapid inflation, which affected contemporary economies across the industrially developped world in the 1970s. Professor Meade outlines the nature of the problem, contrasting the Great Slump of the 1930s with the Great Stagflation of the 1970s and comparing the Orthodox Keynesian and Monetarist approaches with the New Keynesian strategy. Various proposals for the reform of wage-fixing institutions are discussed, including the limitation of trade-union bargaining powers, an official incomes policy, labour management and ownership in business, and tax or subsidy measures to discourage inflationary rises in wages and prices. The book will be essential reading for all concerned with both the theory and policy of contemporary macroeconomics, industrial relations, labour economics and labour law. It has been written so that the general argument in the main text is accessible to the general reader as well as of interest to the professional economist.

First published in 1992, this Routledge Revival sees the reissue of a truly original exploration of the nature of urbanization and capitalism. Linda Clarke’s vital work argues that: Urbanization is a product of the social human labour engaged in building as well as a concentration of the labour force. The quality of the labour process determines the development of production. Changes to the built environment reflect changes in the production process and, in particular, the development of wage labour. To support these arguments, the author identifies a qualitatively new historical stage of capitalist building production involving a significant expansion of wage labour, and hence capital, and the transition from artisan to industrial production. Linda Clarke draws from a wide range of original material relating to the development of London from the mid-eighteenth to the early nineteenth century to provide a complete description of the development process: materials extraction, roadbuilding, housebuilding, paving, cleansing, etc; profiles of builders and contractors involved, and a picture of the new working class communities, as in Somers Town – their living conditions, population, working environment, and politics.

These essays develop a Marxist response to and approach to aspects of the recent economic past in the United Kingdom. They reflect issues and controversies that have arisen within economic policy debate and the economic theory associated with the debate, highlighting the problematic nature of economic policy in the period since the mid-1970s. The book, first published in 1986, develops a line of argument organized around issues of ‘calculation’, thus challenging the orthodox Marxist framework and presenting a neo-Marxist analysis.