Rapidly changing technology, the globalization of markets, and the declining role of unions are just some of the factors that have led to dramatic changes in working conditions in the United States. Little attention has been paid to the difficult measurement problems underlying analysis of the labor market. Labor Statistics Measurement Issues helps to fill this gap by exploring key theoretical and practical issues in the measurement of employment, wages, and workplace practices. Some of the chapters in this volume explore the conceptual issues of what is needed, what is known, or what can be learned from existing data, and what needs have not been met by available data sources. Others make innovative uses of existing data to analyze these topics. Also included are papers examining how answers to important questions are affected by alternative measures used and how these can be reconciled. This important and useful book will find a large audience among labor economists and consumers of labor statistics.

Labor Markets and Business Cycles integrates search and matching theory with the neoclassical growth model to better understand labor market outcomes. Robert Shimer shows analytically and quantitatively that rigid wages are important for explaining the volatile behavior of the unemployment rate in business cycles. The book focuses on the labor wedge that arises when the marginal rate of substitution between consumption and leisure does not equal the marginal product of labor. According to competitive models of the labor market, the labor wedge should be constant and equal to the labor income tax rate. But in U.S. data, the wedge is strongly countercyclical, making it seem as if recessions are periods when workers are dissuaded from working and firms are dissuaded from hiring because of an increase in the labor income tax rate. When job searches are time consuming and wages are flexible, search frictions--the cost of a job search--act like labor adjustment costs, further exacerbating inconsistencies between the competitive model and data. The book shows that wage rigidities can reconcile the search model with the data, providing a quantitatively more accurate depiction of labor markets, consumption, and investment dynamics. Developing detailed search and matching models, Labor Markets and Business Cycles will be the main reference for those interested in the intersection of labor market dynamics and business cycle research.

Labour markets are a central element of any transition from planned economy to market-oriented system. This groundbreaking book examines the plight of Russian workers and employers during the first decade of post-Soviet reforms. The authors argue that higher-than-expected labour market flexibility early in the transition provided an important cushion for workers who would have been displaced with little recourse to social protection. However, over time, this flexibility reduced pressure for enterprise restructuring and accommodated policy drift. Although many workers were quite mobile, often this translated into a loss of human capital for older enterprises_even potentially viable ones_and to OchurningO in the labour market, accompanied by only limited restructuring. There was little job creation, labour hoarding persisted, and many workers saw their wages eroded by inflation and late payment of wages. The authors show this situation was largely the result of insufficient structural reforms, poor institutional development, and misplaced incentives. First providing an overview of the economic situation, key labour market trends, and the institutional situation during the 1990s, the book then reviews labour market dynamics. The authors assess changes in OoldO jobs at former state enterprises and evaluate OnewO job creation, mostly in private businesses. They examine the evolution of wages and the availability of social protection to workers. A special thematic section considers the political economy of labour market policy that brought the ORussian approachO to labour market adjustment to life. The conclusion presents an integrated picture of the Russian labour market in the aftermath of the early transition period and highlights the implications of the experience for current policy.

OECD's annual report on employment markets and prospects. This 2009 edition includes chapters on how the crisis has effected employment, job and worker flows, poverty, and pathways onto and off of disability benefits.

Why economists' attempts to help poorer countries improve their economic well-being have failed. Since the end of World War II, economists have tried to figure out how poor countries in the tropics could attain standards of living approaching those of countries in Europe and North America. Attempted remedies have included providing foreign aid, investing in machines, fostering education, controlling population growth, and making aid loans as well as forgiving those loans on condition of reforms. None of these solutions has delivered as promised. The problem is not the failure of economics, William Easterly argues, but the failure to apply economic principles to practical policy work. In this book Easterly shows how these solutions all violate the basic principle of economics, that people—private individuals and businesses, government officials, even aid donors—respond to incentives. Easterly first discusses the importance of growth. He then analyzes the development solutions that have failed. Finally, he suggests alternative approaches to the problem. Written in an accessible, at times irreverent, style, Easterly's book combines modern growth theory with anecdotes from his fieldwork for the World Bank.