Human Capital, Employment and Bargaining

Provides detailed firm-level labour market analysis of human capital and employment from labour demand, macroeconomic and firm union bargaining perspectives.

Robert A. Hart (Author), Thomas Moutos (Author)

9780521061032, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 24 April 2008

220 pages, 17 b/w illus. 5 tables
22.9 x 15.6 x 1.3 cm, 0.33 kg

"This book will be of special value to academic labor economists and contract theorists." Donald O. Parsons, Industral and Labor Relations Reviews

This book examines human capital investment, employment and bargaining at the level of the firm. It attempts a summary of results that incorporate both human capital investment and employment decisions within firm union bargaining models, emphasising investment in teams, or groups, of workers. The authors also examine human capital in relation to labour demand as well as the delineation between neoclassical and coalitional firms. Further they investigate connections between, on the one hand, turnover costs and firm-specific human capital and, on the other, unemployment. Labour market policy topics recur throughout the book and include the choice between pure wage and profit sharing remuneration systems, the issue of whether training should be subsidized by governments, and work-sharing versus layoff decisions. This book is aimed mainly at the academic economics profession, but is easily accessible to final-year undergraduate and postgraduate students.

1. Overview
2. Labour demand and efficient contract models
3. Turnover costs, firm-specific training and employment
4. Employment and bargaining
5. Choice of compensation, unemployment insurance and policy issues
6. Team-related human capital and bargaining
7. Coalitional versus neoclassical firms
8. Future developments.

Subject Areas: Labour economics [KCF]