1st Edition

Employment, Wages and Income Distribution Critical essays in Economics

By Kurt W Rothschild Copyright 1993
    360 Pages
    by Routledge

    360 Pages
    by Routledge

    Whilst there is widespread agreement about the goals of economic policy, consensus about how best to achieve them can be harder to achieve. No issues are more contentious than employment and income distribution. In recent years full employment and a just distribution of incomes have been downgraded as policy objectives, as greater priority has been given to price stability and balance of payments objectives. This emphasis has been supported by a mainstream economic theory which has an unswerving belief in the ability of market forces to achieve a satisfactory regulation of employment and income distribution
    Other economists have remained more sceptical, and none more so than Kurt Rothschild. This new volume collects together his twenty two most important essays in the area, many of which are appearing in English for the first time. Throughout pure theory is linked to relevant practical investigations.

    A. Employment 1. Microeconomics of the Labour Market 2. Full Employment - A Special Situation? 3. Is There Such a Thing as Unemployment? 4. Is Structural Unemployment An Alibi For Economic Policy? 5. Disguised Discrimination and Search Unemployment 6. The Neglect of Employment in the International Order 7. Some Reflections on the Growth of Female Labour Supply and the Tertiary Sector B. Wages 8. Alternative Dimensions in the Theory of Wages 9. Wage Levels and Employment 10. Approaches to the Theory of Bargaining 11. Wages and Risk-Bearing 12. The Phillips Curve and All That 13. Stagflation: How Much of the Phillips Curve Survives? 14. Is There a Weitzman Miracle? C. Income Distribution 15. The Wage Share in Total Income 16. The Arithmetic and the Interpretation of Wage Shares 17. Some Recent Contributions to a Macroeconomic Theory of Income Distribution. 18. Different Approaches in Distribution Theory 19. Theme and Variations - Remarks on the Kaldorian Distribution Formula 20. Some Notes on Sydney Weintraub's Eclectic Theory of income shares 21. Inequality: Is Income Distribution an Adequate Measure? 22. A Just Distribution of Incomes: A Dilemma Between Ethics and Economics

    Biography

    Kurt W Rothschild

    `On the whole these papers are thoughtful, humane, and critical; any labour economist will find this collection much of interest.' - The Economic Journal