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Economic Category:
Labor and Demographic Economics
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7.
Comparable Worth
Should a truck driver earn more than a telephone operator, or an engineer more than a librarian? Questions like these are largely resolved in the labor market by the forces of supply and demand. This article examines the wage gap and the effects of comparable worth. [Details...]
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8.
Conscription
This article examines whether a military draft is a necessary and fair thing for a government to enforce or whether it was more sensible for the U.S. to institute the public policy of an all-volunteer force. [Details...]
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9.
Discrimination
Because government penalties against discrimination by business make headlines and market penalties do not, the popular wisdom holds that only government stands between individuals and unfair discrimination by business. While governments practicing unfair discrimination face occasional losses only if their activities attract public disfavor, the losses incurred by businesses mount with each and every sale.
[Details...]
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11.
English Poor Laws
For nearly three centuries, the Poor Law constituted "a welfare state in miniature," relieving the elderly, widows, children, the sick, the disabled, and the unemployed and underemployed (Blaug 1964). This essay will outline the changing role played by the Poor Law, focusing on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
[Details...]
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12.
Fertility and Mortality in the United States
Every modern, economically developed nation has experienced the demographic transition from high to low levels of fertility and mortality. America is no exception. But America was also distinctive. First, its fertility transition began in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century at the latest. Second, the fertility rate in America commenced its sustained decline long before that of mortality. Third, both these processes were influenced by America's very high level of net in-migration and also by the significant population redistribution to frontier areas and later to cities, towns, and suburbs. [Details...]
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13.
Gender Gap
When economists speak of the "gender gap," these days they usually are referring to systematic differences in the outcomes that men and women achieve in the labor market. These differences come in the percentages of men and women in the labor force, the types of occupations they choose, and the difference in the average incomes of men and women. These economic gender gaps have been a major issue in the women's movement and a major issue for economists. [Details...]
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14.
History of Labor Turnover in the U.S.
Labor turnover measures the movement of workers in and out of employment with a particular firm. This article explains how the rise of large scale firms in the late nineteenth century and the decreasing importance of agricultural employment meant that a growing number of workers were employed by firms. It was only in this context that interest in measuring labor turnover and understanding its causes began. [Details...]
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16.
Hours of Work in U.S. History
This article presents estimates of the length of the historical workweek in the U.S., describes the history of the shorter-hours "movement," and examines the forces that drove the workweek's decline over time. [Details...]
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17.
Human Capital
This article explains how schooling, a computer training course, expenditures of medical care, and lectures on the virtues of punctuality and honest are all part of what is called human capital. [Details...]
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18.
Immigration
Immigration is a major component of demographic change in the United States. This article shows how immigrants affect the labor market, native earnings, and the economy. [Details...]
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19.
Immigration to the United States
This article focuses on the basic data sources available, the variation in the volume over time, the reasons immigration occurred, nativism and U.S. immigration policy, the characteristics of the immigrant stream, the effects on the United States economy, and the experience of immigrants in the U.S. labor market. [Details...]
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20.
Ireland's Great Famine
This article describes the Great Irish Famine from 1846-1852 by explaining its causes, the direct effects of the famine, and the post-famine adjustment. [Details...]
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21.
Job Safety
This article explains how, contrary to popular belief, employers have many incentives to make workplaces safe, and disputes the fact that if government were not regulating job safety, workplaces would be unsafe. [Details...]
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22.
Labor Unions
This article explains how labor unions are simply cartels that raise wages above competitive levels by capturing monopolies over who companies can hire and what they must pay. [Details...]
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23.
Labor Unions in the United States
This article explores the nature and development of labor unions in the United States. It reviews the growth and recent decline of the American labor movement and makes comparisons with the experience of foreign labor unions to clarify particular aspects of the history of labor unions in the United States. [Details...]
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24.
Minimum Wages
This article explains the history of the minimum wage laws and how minimum wage laws can set laws, but they cannot guarantee jobs. [Details...]
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26.
Population
This article discusses population by focusing on population aging, fluctuations in general size, and population and development. [Details...]
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28.
Slavery in the United States
This article examines slavery in the United States by discussing the spread of slavery in the U.S., the insitutional framework, the legal status of slaves and blacks, the rights and responsibilities of slave masters, markets and prices, and profitibality, efficiency, and exploitation. [Details...]
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29.
The Company Town
This article explains the company town as an economic institution that was part of the market for labor. It discusses company towns as primarily existing in areas associated with the coal industry and discusses the labor struggles associated with it. [Details...]
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30.
The Depression of 1893
This article describes economic developments in the decades leading up to the depression; the performance of the economy during the 1890's; domestic and international causes of depression; and political and social responses to the depression. [Details...]
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32.
The Economics of the Civil War
This article focuses on the economic causes of the Civil war, the costs of the war, the problem of financing the war, and a re-examination of the Hacker-Beard thesis that the war was a turning point in American economic history. [Details...]
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33.
Unemployment
An encyclopedia entry describing unemployment and giving statistics on how it is defined and measured. [Details...]
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35.
Unemployment Rate
Definition of the unemployment rate, the natural rate of unemployment, and limitations of the employment rate measurement. [Details...]
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36.
Wages and Working Conditions
CEOs of multinational corporations, exotic dancers, and children with lemonade stands have at least one thing in common. They all expect a return for their effort. Most workers get that return in a subtle and ever-changing combination of money wages and working conditions. This article describes how they changed for the typical U.S. worker during the twentieth century.
[Details...]
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41.
Principal/Agent Game
This program runs a set of "Principal/Agent" games. The first mover (employer) makes a contract offer, and the second movers (worker) chooses whether to accept the contract. A worker who accepts a contract then chooses an effort level, which is costly to the worker but which benefits the employer. The possible contracts include fixed wage payments, along with possible ex post bonuses, monitoring, penalties, and/or profit sharing. If the contract only specifies a required fixed wage and an optional bonus, then the Nash equilibrium for selfish preferences in a one-shot game is to offer the minimum possible effort, since the wage is paid irrespective of effort. Efforts may be higher with fixed matchings or if participants are concerned with fairness and reciprocity. A number of contract options based (based on penalties and rewards) are also available. The game highlights issues of contract incentives, reciprocity, and strategy. [Details...]
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42.
Statistical Discrimination
Participants are divided into equal numbers of "workers" and "employers," with half of the workers being "green" and half "purple." At the beginning of each round, each worker sees a random cost of investment, which is an independent draw from a uniform distribution on [0, 100]. This cost draw is private information. [Details...]
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44.
Unemployment in Eastern and Central Europe
Unemployment, once unknown and illegal in the formerly communist regimes in eastern and central Europe, has become a significant social and economic phenomenon. The rise in unemployment rates has been large but varied across countries. The transition from centrally planned economies to market-oriented economies has produced significant reductions in employment in the state sector as consumer-driven incentives begin to influence industrial structure. Reductions in employment in the state sector were partially offset by reductions in labor force particpation. Differences in the decline in labor force participation among countries led to significant differences in the relationship between unemployment growth and contraction in employment. However, the decline in labor force participation seems to be concentrated in the early stages of the transition, and in the future declining labor force participation is not likely to play as significant a role in dampening the growth of unemployment. [Details...]
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45.
Unemployment in Eastern and Central Europe
Unemployment, once unknown and illegal in the formerly communist regimes in eastern and central Europe, has become a significant social and economic phenomenon. The rise in unemployment rates has been large but varied across countries. The transition from centrally planned economies to market-oriented economies has produced significant reductions in employment in the state sector as consumer-driven incentives begin to influence industrial structure. Reductions in employment in the state sector were partially offset by reductions in labor force particpation. Differences in the decline in labor force participation among countries led to significant differences in the relationship between unemployment growth and contraction in employment. However, the decline in labor force participation seems to be concentrated in the early stages of the transition, and in the future declining labor force participation is not likely to play as significant a role in dampening the growth of unemployment. [Details...]
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