A Classical Approach to Occupational Wage Rates / Edition 1

by David Gleicher, Rodney Green, Lonnie Stevens

Overview

David Gleicher and Lonnie Stevans present a theory of occupational wage rates that is a classical alternative to human capital theory. They introduce the net employment reserve, a novel explanatory variable that measures the bargaining power of employees in an occupation. An econometric model which includes net reserves is designed and tested. Results suggest standard empirical tests of human capital theory are misspecified. Other topics include: the origin of the firm, screening hypothesis, wage-efficiency, internal labor markets, and labor-market segmentation. This work offers insight into the theoretical and econometric modeling of labor specialization, as well as wage-rate differentials among occupations. It addresses researchers and graduate students in labor economics, classical price theory, and general political economy.

Gleicher and Stevans design an empirical study of the determination of occupational wage-rates, testing the net reserve against other hypothesized variables. Their first two chapters model relative wage rates within a broad classical conception: a simple model of relative prices is extended by incorporating relative wage rates according to occupation and training services. (The authors discuss the implications of these extensions with regard to the labor theory of value.) A testable hypothesis is put forth in Chapters 3 and 4. The fifth and final chapter presents econometric results.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780275932237
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	01/30/1991
Series:	Praeger Series in Political Economy
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	166
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	1420L (what's this?)

About the Author

Dr. DAVID GLEICHER is an Associate Professor of Economics at Adelphi University. The coauthor of Plan and Market in Socialist Economies (in Italian), Dr. Gleicher has written extensively for scholarly jourbanals.

Dr. LONNIE STEVANS is an Assistant Professor of Quantitative Methods in the School of Business at Hofstra University. Dr. Stevans' articles have been published in the Jourbanal of Post-Keynesian Economics, Atlantic Economic Jourbanal, and Work and Occupation, among others.

Table of Contents

Preface
A Theoretical Model of Prices and Wage Rates
Extensions of the Theoretical Model
Wage-Rate Determination 1
Wage-Rate Determination 2
An Econometric Model of Occupational Wage Rates
Bibliography
Index