From: Robin Hanson (hanson@econ.berkeley.edu)
Date: Thu Sep 24 1998 - 12:02:07 MDT
On 9/3 I listed these causes of unemployment:
>Search ... Minimum wages ... Capital constraints ... Time runs out ...
>Bad luck ... Poverty ...
I just read a short interesting book, "The Labor Market as a Social Institution",
by (Nobel winner) Robert Solow, wherein he sketches a number of other possible
causes. These include people working harder when jobs are scarce, firm insiders
colluding to limit new employees, and loss of social status from accepting a job
with lower pay. It seems plausible that there is an awful lot we don't
understand about the basic processes here. Hard to do much fixing till you
know what's going on.
Robin Hanson
hanson@econ.berkeley.edu http://hanson.berkeley.edu/
RWJF Health Policy Scholar, Sch. of Public Health 510-643-1884
140 Warren Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 FAX: 510-643-8614
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