The most prominent theories of unemployment that have emerged since 1960 are search, disequilibrium, implicit contracts, efficiency wage, and insider/outsider models. Search models assume that it takes time and effort for employers and potential employees to find each other. A "partial-partial" equilibrium approach focuses on one side of the market. The reservation wage approach focuses on the problem of finding an employer willing to offer adequate compensation. The most promising is the trade friction approach. The fixed price or disequilibrium literature shows that the most effective policy for combating unemployment depends upon which markets are out of equilibrium. Recent work has shown that imperfect competition in a general equilibrium setting may result in "coordination failures." Basic assumptions underlying research in implicit contracts are that contract terms are isolated from market forces and that workers are more averse to risk than employers are. This line of research has encountered difficulties in attempting to explain the coexistence of wage rigidity and unemployment in a contracting framework. The two most promising lines of research in an attempt to explain wage rigidity and unemployment are efficiency wage theory and the insider/outsider theory of unemployment. Two issues remain: empirical verification of critical features of the models and similarities across models. (An index and 176 references are provided.) (YLB)

Summarises the following theories of unemployment, which have emerged since the 1960s: search, disequilibrium (i.e. fixed price models), implicit contracts, efficiency wage, and insider/outsider models.

This book tackles the issue of involuntary employment, examining the issue in the light of Keynesian and Post-Keynesian theory.

The Great Depression of the 1930s with its dramatic unemployment rates was one of the most striking economic events of the past century. It shook economists' beliefs in the existence of self-adjusting forces and prompted Keynes to write his masterwork, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Involuntary unemployment was the central concept of Keynes' book. However, after having been considered the sine qua non of economics for decades, it has gradually disappeared from textbooks and research. This book recounts and ponders this demise, asking whether the abandonment of the concept of involuntary unemployment is the manifestation of some inner defect of recent economic theory or is rather due to some intrinsic weakness of the concept itself, which makes it of little use when it comes to economic theorising. In order to disentangle these issues, the author critically reviews the different explanations of involuntary unemployment that have been offered from Keynes up to the end of the 1980s. After consideringThe General Theory, the author studies the works of pioneering macroeconomists such as Hicks, Modigliani, Lange, Leontief, Tobin, Klein and Hansen. An examination of the 're-appraisal of Keynes' and of the so-called disequilibrium school is followed by a discussion of Friedman's and Lucas' anti-Keynesian attack. The final part of the book investigates a series of models purporting to revive the Keynesian project, namely implicit contract, efficiency wages, insider-outsider, coordination failures, and imperfect competition.

John Maynard Keynes is the great British economist of the twentieth century whose hugely influential work The General Theory of Employment, Interest and * is undoubtedly the century's most important book on economics--strongly influencing economic theory and practice, particularly with regard to the role of government in stimulating and regulating a nation's economic life. Keynes's work has undergone significant revaluation in recent years, and "Keynesian" views which have been widely defended for so long are now perceived as at odds with Keynes's own thinking. Recent scholarship and research has demonstrated considerable rivalry and controversy concerning the proper interpretation of Keynes's works, such that recourse to the original text is all the more important. Although considered by a few critics that the sentence structures of the book are quite incomprehensible and almost unbearable to read, the book is an essential reading for all those who desire a basic education in economics. The key to understanding Keynes is the notion that at particular times in the business cycle, an economy can become over-productive (or under-consumptive) and thus, a vicious spiral is begun that results in massive layoffs and cuts in production as businesses attempt to equilibrate aggregate supply and demand. Thus, full employment is only one of many or multiple macro equilibria. If an economy reaches an underemployment equilibrium, something is necessary to boost or stimulate demand to produce full employment. This something could be business investment but because of the logic and individualist nature of investment decisions, it is unlikely to rapidly restore full employment. Keynes logically seizes upon the public budget and government expenditures as the quickest way to restore full employment. Borrowing the * to finance the deficit from private households and businesses is a quick, direct way to restore full employment while at the same time, redirecting or siphoning

What sense is the student of economics to make of the seemingly irreconcilable positions espoused by rival schools of thought? How will the student be able to form a balanced judgement of the relative merits and demerits of, for example, the Keynesian and the monetarist approaches to macroeconomics? More fundamentally, what is a Keynesian and how does a Keynesian differ from a monetarist or a new classical macroeconomist. J.A. Trevithick provides a fascinating and highly readable account of macroeconomic theory. He places the emphasis squarely on the Keynesian approach, demonstrating clearly the role of earlier authors in Keynes's development of The General Theory. Moreover, he shows how new classical economics is a conscious reaction to the Keynesian approach. He provides a powerful re-statement of the continuance of Keynes's central role in macroeconomics despite many challenges. No-one, from whatever school, will be able to ignore this book.

Known for his seminal work in efficiency-wage theory, Andrew Weiss surveys recent research in the field and presents new results. He shows how wage schedules affect the kinds of workers a firm employs and how well those workers perform on the job. Using straightforward examples, he demonstrates how efficiency-wage theory can explain labor market outcomes and guide government policy. There is a separate section of applications to less developed countries. "Efficiency-wage models represent one of the most important developments in economic theory of recent years. They have, at last, provided integrated explanations both of macroeconomic phenomena, such as unemployment and wage rigidity, and microeconomic phenomena, such as wage dispersion. Weiss--one of the pioneers of efficiency-wage theory--provides here a masterful survey, a lucid and systematic and yet critical account of this rapidly developing branch of economics. This book should be required reading in all courses in macroeconomics."--Joseph Stiglitz, Stanford University "Efficiency Wages should be on the bookshelf of all labor and macroeconomists."--Lawrence H. Summers, Harvard University "A splendid monograph ... most readable... I will put it on my reading list."--Partha Dasgupta, Stanford University Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.