37417 - Globalisation and the Labour Market

Learning outcomes

Most labor economics courses focus on a few developed countries, especially the U.S., the U.K. and some continental E.U. countries, often also in isolation from those technological and institutional processes that have resulted in an ever more integrated world economy. After a basic introduction to labor supply and labor demand, this course will try to remedy this state of affairs and will focus on two blocks of issues. First, it will take a close look at some of those processes that we subsume under the heading “globalization” and how these processes affect labor market outcomes in developed and developing countries. The second focus is on specific features of labor markets in developing and transition economies. After completion of the course students should have a better understanding of how economic theory and empirical evidence lead us to analyze the effects of globalization on labor markets in the developed and less developed parts of the world. In addition students will have gained an appreciation of how labor markets in developing and transition countries contribute to the development and transformation process.

Course contents

1.      The simple neoclassical model of the labor market – labor supply and labor demand.

2.      Beyond neoclassical theory – why is the labor market not like a commodity market? Trade union and efficiency wage models.

3.      Foreign trade, technological change and globalization: theory and empirical evidence on the effects of increased trade and technological change on employment, unemployment and the distribution of earnings in labor markets of developed and less developed countries.

4.      The impact of inward migration on labor markets in developed economies – theory and evidence.

5.      Models of labor markets in developing countries – efficiency wage models, duality models, informal employment and labor market segmentation.

6.      Labor market adjustment in transition countries: contrasting the adjustment paths of Central Europe versus the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

7.      Job Creation and Job Destruction in Transition: How creative has been job destruction over the last decade?

8.      Worker displacement in transition: the incidence and cost of job loss in transition countries.

9.      Active labor market policies in transition countries: their rationale and their evaluation.

Readings/Bibliography

There is no satisfactory textbook that covers all these topics but a large literature on all the studied issues. However, students can consult two textbooks that cover parts of the course:

 

Pierre Cahuc and René Zylberberg, Labor Economics, MIT Press, 2004 – this is an advanced textbook;

R.G. Ehrenberg and R.S.Smith, Modern Labor Economics, Theory and Public Policy, various editions, Harper Collins – this is an intermediate textbook.

 

A detailed bibliography will be published on my homepage (http://www.dse.unibo.it/lehmann/riservato/Download_fo.htm/ ).
From the home page you can also download my power point presentation on each topic.

 

Teaching methods

Lectures and discussion of students' presentations.

Assessment methods

Studenti frequentanti

 

Final oral examination: 70% of overall grade;

2 Power Point Presentations of a paper by students: 30% of overall grade.

 

Studenti non-frequentanti 

 

Final oral examination: 100% of overall grade.

Teaching tools

Blackboard and power point projector.

Office hours

See the website of Hartmut Lehmann