Royer lectures
1 total work
Traditional theories of the labour market portray it as in nearly all respects just like the market for any other perishable commodity: capable of analysis by the standard tools of demand and supply. So how can these theories explain such basic and pervasive phenomena as the relative inflexibility of wages and the persistence of high and involuntary unemployment, both facts at odds with the predictions of conventional economic models? In this book, Robert Solow, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, presents a new understanding of the operation of the labour market, based on the view of it as an institution. He examines the evidence for the assertion that the labour market is a market for a very different kind of commodity with many characteristics and he explores ways in which theories of the determination of wage values and employment might better be reconciled.