Reddit reviews Labor Economics

Oma valuutta voisi olla eduksi, mutta markkaan palaaminen ei vaikuta kovinkaan realistiselta. En tosin ymmärrä miksi pidät omaa valuuttaa toivottavana mutta et joustavia työmarkkinoita. Oma valuuttakin nostaisi työllisyyttä laskemalla reaalisia palkkoja, eikä siis ole mikään taikatemppu työllisyyden nostamiseksi.

>Palkat ovat tälläkin hetkellä liian matalia.

Mitä etua kuvittelet omasta valuutasta olevan jos palkat ovat mielestäsi liian matalia? Mitä uskot tapahtuvan uuden valuutan arvolle jos siihen siirrytään?

Mitä edes tarkoitat liian matalalla palkalla? Mikä on mielestäsi palkkatason vaikutus työttömyyteen? Voiko korkea palkka missään tapauksessa edes estää työllistymistä?

Jos palkka ei riitä kohtuulliseen elintasoon, sitä voi korvata vaikka perustulolla. Palkan tulisi olla sellainen että työttömyys on mahdollisimman pieni.

>Ei selitä. Korkea työttömyys on yksinomaan talousriisin seurausta.

Mikä on arviosi rakentellisesta työttömyydestä? Suomen työttömyys oli ennen talouskriisiäkin vain hetkellisesti alle 7%, ja tämäkin oli kovan inflaation aikana. NAIRU on varmaan jotain 7-8%. Tuon alle tuskin pitkän ajan tasapainossa päästään ilman uudistuksia.

Talouskriisin takia työttömyys on ehkä vain 1-2% korkeammalla kuin muuten.

Mä kysyin sulta joku aika sitten mihin sun ymmärrys työmarkkinoiden toiminnasta perustuu, ja vastasit:

>Tietoni perustuu siihen, että olen lukenut työllisyyskatsauksista ja mediasta, että Suomessa tehdään runsaasti palkatonta työtä edellämainituilla nimikkeillä.

Tämä ei vielä kerro mitään työmarkkinoiden toiminnasta. Jos sinua oikeasti kiinnostaa asia niin työn taloustieteestä löytyy kirjoja joita suosittelen lukemaan. Tässä vaikka yksi jota käytetään aiheen kursseilla.

Any good labor economics textbook will cover this is some detail. For example Borjas:

>It has long been recognized that unions can arise and prosper only under certain conditions. Because the free entry and exit of firms into the marketplace reduce profits to a normal return on investment (that is, zero excess profits), unions can flourish only when firms earn above-normal profits, or what economists call "rents." In effect,
unions provide an institutional mechanism through which employers share the rents with workers.

. . . . .

>In general, workers are more likely to support unionization when the union organizer can promise a high wage and a small employment loss. Moreover, because there are additional costs to joining a union (such as union dues), the worker will be more likely to support unions when these costs are small. These factors generate the "demand" for union jobs.

>The demand for union jobs is not the sole determinant of the extent of unionization in the labor market. The ability of union organizers to deliver union jobs depends on the costs of organizing the workforce, on the legal environment that permits certain types of union activities and prohibits others, on the resistance of management to the introduction of collective bargaining, and on whether the firm is making excess rents that can be captured by the union membership. These forces, in effect, determine the "supply" of union jobs.


>The extent of unionization observed in the labor market is determined by the interaction of these two forces. As a result, the unionization rate will be higher the more workers have to gain by becoming unionized and will be lower the harder it is to convert jobs from nonunion to union status. This "cost-benefit" approach helps us understand differences in unionization rates across demographic groups, across industries, and over time.

. . . . .

>There are also sizable differences in unionization rates across private sector industries, with workers in construction, manufacturing and transportation being the most likely to be unionized, and workers in agriculture and finance being the least likely. The available evidence,in fact, suggests that workers employed in concentrated industries, where most of the output is produced by a few firms, are more likely to be unionized. This result is consistent with our cost-benefit approach to understanding differences in unionization tares. Ater all, firms in concentrated industries earn excess profits due to monopoly power, so unions have a good chance of extracting some of the rents for the workers. Moreover, the goods produced by highly concentrated industries tend to have few substitutes, implying that the elasticity of demand for the output is small. As we saw in Chapter 4, low elasticities of output demand imply relatively inelastic labor demand curves. THese two forces suggest that unions can offer workers in these industries large wage gains without a corresponding loss in employment.

>Unionization rates are also much higher among blue-collar workers (such as production workers and laborers) than among white-collar workers (such as managers, professionals, and persons in sales jobs). Blue-collar workers are likely to be a more homogeneous group and hence are probably easier to organize. In addition blue-collar workers tend to have less amenable working conditions
and would react more favorably to the union's promised employment contract.

Borjas’s textbook is what I used in undergrad, and I think it’s fairly good. It only requires an understanding of principals, though an understanding of intermediate micro would be better. Also, the older editions are very cheap.

Undergrad-wise, I know of Borjas and the book my boss wrote.