Contemporary Labor Economics

This undergraduate textbook by McConnell (University of Nebraska), Brue (Pacific Lutheran University) and Macpherson (Florida State University) focuses attention on labor economics as an applied area of both micro and macro economic theory. It is along these lines that the text divides its discussion of labor as commodity, first through looking at the way labor supply and demand work together to determine wage rates, structure, and types and composition of pay, then by discussing how this affects the distribution of earnings, labor productivity, and levels of employment. This seventh edition offers new topics involving issues of public policy such as immigration, outsourcing, living wages, earnings mobility, downsizing, income tax credits, overtime pay, and pension plans. New discussions are also included on the monopoly union and efficient contracts model of union behavior and the accident and asymmetrical information models of strikes. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR