Labour economics seeks to understand the functioning and dynamics of the markets for wage labour. Labour is a commodity that is supplied by labourers in exchange for a wage paid by demanding firms. Because these labourers exist as parts of a social, institutional, or political system, labour economics is often regarded as a sociology or political science.
A minimum wage is the lowest remuneration that employers can legally pay their employees—the price floor below which employees may not sell their labor. Most countries had introduced minimum wage legislation by the end of the 20th century. Because minimum wages increase the cost of labor, companies often try to avoid minimum wage laws by using gig workers, by moving labor to locations with lower or nonexistent minimum wages, or by automating job functions.
Unemployment, according to the OECD, is people above a specified age not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for work during the reference period.
David Edward Card is a Canadian-American labour economist and professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. He was awarded half of the 2021 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for his empirical contributions to labour economics", with Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens jointly awarded the other half.
Social issues in China are wide-ranging, and are a combined result of Chinese economic reforms set in place in the late 1970s, the nation's political and cultural history, and an immense population. Due to the significant number of social problems that have existed throughout the country, China's government has faced difficulty in trying to remedy the issues. Many of these issues are exposed by the Chinese media, while subjects that may contain politically sensitive issues may be censored. Some academics hold that China's fragile social balance, combined with a bubble economy makes China a very unstable country, while others argue China's societal trends have created a balance to sustain itself.
Geraint Johnes is Professor of Economics at Lancaster University Management School.
Lars Osberg has been a member of the Economics Department at Dalhousie University since 1977. He also worked for a brief period at the University of Western Ontario. He is well known internationally for his contributions in the field of economics. His major research interests are the measurement and determinants of inequality, social exclusion and poverty, measurement of economic well-being, leisure co-ordination and economic well-being, time use and economic development, economic insecurity.
Harry Joseph Holzer is an American economist, educator and public policy analyst.
Dennis J. Snower is an American-German economist, specialising in macroeconomic theory and policy, labor economics and the psychology of economic decisions in "caring economics". He is President of the Global Solutions Initiative, providing policy advice to the G20, and Professor of Macroeconomics and Sustainability at the German Hertie School. He is former president of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy and Professor of Economics at the Christian-Albrechts Universität zu Kiel, where his labor and macroeconomic research showed that costs of adjusting employment, wages and prices play a central role in macroeconomic fluctuations. His psycho-social economics research indicates that economic decisions are driven by motives that depend on people's physical and social context.
Timothy J. Bartik is an American economist who specializes in regional economics, public finance, urban economics, labor economics, and labor demand policies. He is a senior economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Disequilibrium macroeconomics is a tradition of research centered on the role of disequilibrium in economics. This approach is also known as non-Walrasian theory, equilibrium with rationing, the non-market clearing approach, and non-tâtonnement theory. Early work in the area was done by Don Patinkin, Robert W. Clower, and Axel Leijonhufvud. Their work was formalized into general disequilibrium models, which were very influential in the 1970s. American economists had mostly abandoned these models by the late 1970s, but French economists continued work in the tradition and developed fixprice models.
Adriana Kugler is a Colombian-American economist and professor of public policy at Georgetown University. She served as the Chief Economist to U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis from September 6, 2011 to January 4, 2013.
Alan Manning is a British economist and professor of economics at the London School of Economics.
Erica Lynn Groshen is the former Commissioner of Labor Statistics and head of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the independent, principal fact-finding agency for the U.S. government in the broad fields of labor economics and statistics, inflation, and productivity. BLS is part of the U.S. Department of Labor.
Randall W. Eberts is an American economist who specializes in the public workforce system, public finance, urban economics, labor economics, infrastructure and productivity, and policies promoting student achievement. He was president of the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Kalamazoo, Michigan from 1993 until 2019 and is currently a senior researcher there.
Thomas Lemieux is a Canadian economist and professor at the University of British Columbia.
Ragui A. Assaad is an Egyptian economist and Professor of Planning and Public Affairs at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. His research interests include labour economics, inequality and the economics of education. He ranks among the most prominent economists of Egypt.
Francis Kramarz is a French economist who works as Professor at the École Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Administration Économique (ENSAE), where he has been directing the Center for Research in Economics and Statistics (CREST). He is one of the leading labour economists in France.
Mary C. Daly is an American economist, who became the 13th President and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco on October 1, 2018. Accordingly, she serves on the Federal Reserve's rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee on a rotating basis. Previously, Daly was the Executive Vice President and Director of Research of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, which she joined as an economist in 1996.
Patrick McGraw Kline is an U.S. American economist and Professor of Economics of the University of California at Berkeley. In 2018, his research was awarded the Sherwin Rosen Prize by the Society of Labor Economists for "outstanding contributions in the field of labor economics". In 2020, he was awarded the prestigious IZA Young Labor Economist Award.
