|
B44: The Economics of Industrial Relations
Jaap Abbring
, Department of Economics, University College London, Spring
2002
|
[announcements
][reading
][course material
][contact info
]
NOTE: THIS IS NOT THE B44 WEB PAGE FOR
2002-03 TERM 1 (FALL).
Description
This course is about the economics of labour relations, an issue that has
recently re-emerged as a topic of major interest for economists. The
course aims to provide a balance between the institutional approach that has
been followed by students of industrial relations for many years and various
modern developments in labour economics. The goal is to equip students with
an understanding of the operation of labour markets, their main institutional
features and the economic analysis of employment contracts. We rely on economic
theory to structure thoughts and study the empirical literature to link these
thoughts to reality.
Announcements
- (Apr 7) I have posted the lecture notes in the
course material
section.
- (Mar 22) I have posted answers to Problem Sets 3 and 4.
They are revised versions of the hard
copies distributed by Bertrand in class. I have also added the promised
link on PLAs in the course material section.
- (Mar 22) The revision lecture is on Wednesday 24th April,
10-11 AM in Drayton House, Jevons B20. I will use the lecture
to answer questions and clarify any problems you may come up with.
Don't hesitate to send me comments or questions by email. Also, feel
free to contact me for an appointment if you experience problems
in preparing for the exam.
- (Mar 22) I have added information on the
exam to the course material section. I have also added a
reference to the text on efficiency wages in MR to the reading section.
Reading
I will develop a reading guide as we go (note that handouts will be posted
later in the course material section
). I abbreviate some references from the syllabus as follows: B: Booth (1995)
BOR: Borjas (2000) BDS: Bosworth, Dawkins and Stromback (1996) CWOD: Cully,
Woodland, O'Reilly and Dix (1999) LNJ: Layard, Nickell and Jackman (1991)
MBF: Millward, Bryson and Forth (2000) MR: Milgrom and Roberts (1992)
Numbers following the abbreviations refer to chapters, sections, etcetera.
Links to papers typically only work from campus (IP-controlled service).
1+2. Introduction and relation to standard neoclassical
model
- Your favourite textbook (e.g. BOR or BDS): Review
of standard neoclassical model
- B 1: Introduction to unions
- First part of MR 10: Some background on labour
contracts and human resources systems
3. Trade unions and labour market power
(a) Overview and history
B 2: Historical overview of UK and US unionism.
CWOD (from p. 234) and BOR 11: Recent data on
resp. UK and US.
LNJ: Broader international comparison
(b) Wage setting, employment and allocative efficiency
B 4, 5 and 3 (in this order)
"Wage Bargaining and Employment", Ian M. McDonald and Robert
M. Solow, The American Economic Review, Vol.
71, No. 5. (Dec., 1981), pp. 896-908
BOR 11 and BDS 25 are one-chapter overviews of
the relevant material.
(c) Empirical analysis of wage and employment effects
of unions
(d) Union membership, source of monopoly power, insider-outsider
theory, strikes
- You should have encountered the relevant bits and
pieces in the B 1-6. In particular, make sure to
read B 3.4 on monopoly power and B 5.6 on strikes.
[4. Minimum wages: will be omitted]
5. Human-resource systems
- MR 10-13
- MR 8 (in particular, pp. 250 and further in my
copy) comes closest to my discussion of efficiency
wages.
- BOR 12 (incentives) and 7.9 (training); BDS 18-22
and 16.4 (training)
- Polachek and Siebert (1993), 9 and 4.4
(training), and Lazear (1996)
- B 3.3 and 7: unions and organization (also:
Freeman and Medoff, 1984)
- CWOD for extensive data on the UK
We will first discuss employment relations and elements of
human resource systems in general and only then discuss the role of
unions and empirical results. Nevertheless, you may find it convenient
to read part of the Booth references (on the role of unions in the
organisation of employment relationships) now. MR is a very
good general reference for this topic, but be warned: even though
it does not involve any mathematics, it is conceptually demanding.
MR 10 is a good start. An easier start would be to read the relevant
material from BOR, which is not complete though. The relevant parts
of BDS are more complete, but also quite a bit harder. Freeman
and Medoff (1984) is the standard reference on the "two faces" of
unions. Polachek and Siebert (1993) and Lazear (1996) are useful alternative
sources on human resource systems. I will prepare notes for this
part of the course (well in time for the exam). CWOD report
extensively on human resource practices in the UK.
|
| |
[back to top
]
Course material
NOTE: LINKS IN THIS SECTION HAVE BEEN DISCONTINUED;
ALL MATERIAL WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE THROUGH THE B44 FALL 2002 WEB PAGE.
- Syllabus
(PDF, 3 pages, Jan 7)
- Problem set 1
(PDF, 3 pages, Jan 17)
Key to problem set 1
(PDF, 7 pages, Feb 7 revised!)
- Problem set 2
(PDF, 3 pages, Feb 5) wagetest.dta
(STATA data set) probb442.do
(STATA do-file) Key
to problem set 2
(PDF, 4 pages. Mar 4)
- Problem set 3
(PDF, 1 page, Feb 21) Key
to problem set 3
(PDF, 3 pages, Mar 22 revised!)
- Problem set 4
(PDF, 3 pages, Mar 5) Key
to problem set 4
(PDF, 5 pages, Mar 22 revised!)
- Lecture notes
(PDF, 59 pages, Apr 7)
- The exam is on 22th May. It will be closed book and you
won't be allowed to use a calculator (but you won't need one either).
The exam will have the same format as in previous years, but with
6 questions to choose (still 3 questions) from.
Old exams can be found here
under the header B44. Be aware that slightly
different topics have been covered in previous years.
In particular, we will not pay much attention to wage inequality,
intergenerational mobility and minimum wages. The most important reading
for the exam is Booth Ch. 1-7 and MR Ch. 10-13 (there will be no
questions only about executive pay, but Ch. 13 will still be useful
in thinking about incentive pay, selection, etcetera, more
in general). You may also want to consult some text for efficiency
wages. The other references, in particular the relevant chapters from
text books like Borjas, will definitely be helpful in gaining a better
understanding of the material.
- [Extra econometrics
notes
(PDF, 124 pages, Feb 4) Those of you who already know regression
analysis and want to freshen up can have a look at Sections 3 and
4 of these notes. This is only meant as a service for
those who are particularly interested in understanding the
details of the empirical work we discuss and who already have some
background in statistics or econometrics. These
notes are NOT part of this course!]
- Notes will be posted no later than
Monday 8th April.
Some news and movie links:
If you have problems reading course material (pdf-files) directly into
your browser window, saving to disk first should help. If you point at the
link and then press your right mouse button, you should get an option "Save
target as" or "Save link as". Once saved on disk, you can read and print
the file with your Acrobat viewer by simply clicking it (on most computers
that have an Acrobat viewer). Problems may also be inherent to Microsoft Internet
Explorer. So, using Netscape Navigator may help. See also
Adobe's solutions
. You can always
email me
if you are are not able to print the syllabus or any other file, and I
will send it to you.
[back to top
]
Contact information
I have office hours Monday after class (see Syllabus). Feel free to email
me with any questions you may have.
[back to top
]
Last modified:
by
Jaap Abbring