Labor Economics: Problems in Analyzing Labor Markets

by William A. Darity Jr. (Editor)

William Darity, Jr. In 1984 the Kluwer series in Modern Economic Thought, under the editorial direction of Warren Samuels, brought out a book under my editorship entitled Labor Economics: Modern Views. It consisted of a series of essays and commentaries that sought, in a critical fashion, to assess the state of the art in the field of labor economics with respect to several themes. These included methodology versus practice, the analysis of discrimination by gender and race, the phenomenon of persistent racial differences in un­ employment exposure, occupational safety and health regulation, dual versus segmented labor markets, and the remnants of the Phillips curve trade-off between unemployment and inflation. Nearly a decade later I was approached by Warren Samuels and Kluwer about editing a new book that would again address where things stand in labor economics. In proceeding with the development of this current book I was a struck by the extent to which the research thrust that was apparent in the early 1980s remains intact as we move toward the 21st century. The vast majority of scholarship in the labor subfield is dominated by the methodological orientation of applied neoclassical microeconomics, supplemented by incursions from the themes that occupy the so-called "pure theorists," particularly of the game theoretic variety.

315 pages, Hardcover

First published December 31, 1992

About the author

William A. "Sandy" Darity, Jr. is an American economist and researcher. He is currently the Arts and Sciences Professor of Public Policy in the Sanford School at Duke University and was the Cary C. Boshamer Professor of Economics and Sociology at the University of North Carolina. Darity was a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors in 1984, and from 1989 to 1990 was a fellow at the National Humanities Center. He is a former President of the Southern Economic Association.

His varied research interests have included economic stratification, the African diaspora, the economics of black reparations, group-based post traumatic stress disorder, and social and economic policy as they relate to race and ethnicity. [wikipedia]