Labour Economics

Code:

LEC311

Acronym:

ET

Keywords
Classification	Keyword
OFICIAL	Economics

Instance: 2005/2006 - 2S

Active?	Yes
Responsible unit:	Grupo de Economia
Course/CS Responsible:	ECONOMICS

Cycles of Study/Courses

Acronym	No. of Students	Study Plan	Curricular Years	Credits UCN	Credits ECTS	Contact hours	Total Time
ECO	277	Official Curricular Structure since 2004	3	3		-

Objectives

The aim of the course can be summarised in three main points:
- to ensure that students are familiar with Labour Market statistics and that they have concrete knowledge of the situation of the labour market and of the most common indicators that are used in statistics;
- to present and discuss a certain number of theories, that are representative of the state-of-the-art in the area, and try to use them to discuss the empirical evidences that statistics show;
- to discuss the political implications of different theoretical explanations.

Program

I. Labour Economics: topics and evidence from European Labour Markets.
II. The neo-classical model of the labour market: the determinants of labour supply and labour demand.
III. Major developments in the 50s and 60s: human capital (education and on-the-job training); job search and labour market discrimination.
IV. Beyond the market, other theoretical approaches: efficiency wages; the insiders-outsiders mechanism; internal labour markets and dual labour markets; The French regulation approach.
V. Recent debates on employment policy.

Main Bibliography

BORJAS George J., Labor Economics, McGraw-Hill, 2000, 2nd edition.

Complementary Bibliography

EHRENBERG R. G., SMITH R. S., Modern Labor Economics. Theory and Public Policy, HarperCollins College Publishers, 1994
FILER R. G., HAMERMESH D. S., REES A. E., The Economics of Work and Pay, HarperCollins College Publishers, 1996 (6th ed.)
GAZIER, Bernard Économie du Travail et de l’Emploi, Précis Dalloz, 1992, (2nd ed.)
McCONNEL, Campbell R. & BRUE, Stanley L. Contemporary Labor Economics, McGraw-Hill, 1989 (2nd ed.)

Teaching methods and learning activities

We combine the presentation of the different topics with some practical work, which essentially aims at presenting empirical data and discussing the explanation that the different theories allow. Empirical data concerns mainly the Portuguese and the EU labour markets.

Evaluation Type

Evaluation with final exam