Relationship between wages, employment and productivity, macroeconomic model comparisons, Australia - Phillips curve, input output. Bibliography, diagrams, graphs, statistical tables.

The global crisis has led to dramatic increases in unemployment rates over most of the countries of the OECD. This book provides alternative explanations of this phenomenon. Junankar begins with surveys of the labour market: labour demand, labour supply, and labour force participation. He argues that the growth of unemployment and long-term unemployment is mainly due to a lack of aggregated demand and not due to high unemployment benefits. Economics of the Labour Market shows that unemployment and long-term unemployment impose serious and significant costs on individuals, families, and society in general. Raja Junankar focuses on vital social issues arising from the malfunctioning of economies and this collection of essays tackles the real cost of unemployment.

Originally published in 1985 and contributed to by internationally renowned economists, this volume discusses theoretical issues and country-specific experiences to review the underlying causes of the stagflation of the 1970s and early 1980s, as well as summarizing the kinds of macro-policies that were adopted to deal with the stagflation.

The advent of industrial regulation by tribunal came close to the turn of the century. Wages boards began in Victoria in 1896 and courts of arbitration in 1900. The first day of the new century was also the first day of the Commonwealth of Australia, endowed with a Parliament that was empowered to institute its chosen models of conciliation and arbitration for the prevention and settlement of interstate industrial disputes. This book is a study of the operation of conciliation and arbitration, especially by the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration, from the inception of the system until World War II. It is not, however, a general history of conciliation and arbitration. It does not, for example, deal with the successes and failures of the tribunals in preventing strikes and lockouts; or with the manifold legal issues to which the system gave rise, unless they affected significantly the tribunals' exercise of their power to fix wages and conditions. Rather, it is about fixing the terms of employment; and it attempts to set the tribunals' performance in an economic context. It is about 'wage policy', if the term is interpreted broadly enough to include both prescribed wages and other factors that affect the cost of labour, including working hours and leave.