Wondering why economists have not predicted serious financial crises? Shocked by economic assumptions of human behavior as self-centered and focusing only on what can be measured? Asking yourself if there are no sensible economic alternatives to free markets? Then you are at the right place to learn economics! This is the first online course that teaches economics from a pluralist perspective. Economic pluralism means that a plurality of theoretical and methodological viewpoints is regarded as valuable in itself and is simply the best way in which economics can make progress in understanding the world. This MOOC will illustrate economic pluralism not only in substance but also in form. You will see not only me, a Professor of Economics, but also a pop-up Prof of our business school, who illustrates the actor perspective of firms, government and civil society. And you will meet an online student, based in Greece, who will help you through the tutorial videos in which I will explain key concepts, tools and techniques. I will not limit myself to the dominant theory, as almost every other course does. Instead, I will introduce you to four very different economic theories for the whole set of standard topics in microeconomics and macroeconomics. The theories are presented every time from broad and more interdisciplinary to narrow and more mathematical. The four theories that I like to introduce you to are Social Economics, Institutional Economics, Post Keynesian economics and, at the very end of each topic, Neoclassical Economics, for the special case of ideally functioning markets. But not everything is different in this course. Like every economics course, it includes numbers, diagrams, tables, equations, and some calculations. Why would you go through the effort of learning the basics of four theories instead of one? Because it will help you to see why many economists cannot predict crises, whereas others can see signals but are often not being listened to because they do not belong to the dominant school of thought. It will also enable you to see that it is just one theory claiming economic agents to be self-centered and focusing on the measurable only. Other economic theories go well beyond these limitations. And, finally, the pluralist approach will provide you with policy alternatives to neoliberalist policies promoting free markets. The objective of this course is twofold. First, to enable you to understand different economic viewpoints, linked to important traditions in economic thought, and basic economic concepts belonging to these theoretical perspectives. Second, to enable you to do some basic economic calculations that are important in economic life, such as calculating an inflation rate, and in economic policies, such as estimating the rough gains from trade for both trading partners, and in economic arguments, such as in calculating utility maximization with given prices and budgets. I hope you will enjoy the course!
Labour Markets - Institutional Economics
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來自 Erasmus University Rotterdam 的課程
Introduction to Economic Theories
27 個評分
從本節課中
Micro Economics: Factor Markets
與講師見面
Irene van StaverenProf. dr.
International Institute of Social Studies (ISS)
Rob van TulderProf. dr.
Department of Business-Society Management, Rotterdam School of Management
Maria DafnomiliPhD researcher
International Institute of Social Studies
>> Welcome to the labour market video from an institutional perspective.
This is all about institutions.
In this video, I will first discuss the institutions of labour supply,
then the institutions of labour demands and
then institutions around contracts and wages.
What I find most insightful from this theory is that it explains not
only why workers and employers interests can diverge, but
also how they overlap and what policies help us to create win-win situations?
Let me start with the institutions of labour supply.
Labour supply is not just there.
The number of people offering their labour and the human capital embedded in that
labor is strongly influenced by formal institutions in particular education,
and social protection policies like pensions, and
unemployment arrangements, and institutions differ between countries.
So, the factors driving labour supply also differ.
In developed countries, we also need to be aware of the welfare trap.
When the unemployed receive state support,
they will lose this when they take up a job again.
And often, they will lose other support like housing subsidies and
free healthcare.
So getting a job may mean losing state support,
so that a net benefit of earning an owned income is zero.
This leads to a policy dilemma.
How to get people back to jobs while at the same time provide social
protection for those who need it?
While politicians are still figuring out how to do this,
let us focus on informal institutions of labour supply.
We've all ready seen the so-called blue and pink sectors where men, and
women tend to be concentrated respectively.
And there are the typical 3D jobs that are often taken up by immigrants,
dirty, dangerous and demeaning.
In South Africa, for example, we see such jobs being taken up by
immigrant workers from countries, such as Zimbabwe and Mozambique.
For example, in the mining sector.
A particular type of institutions are gendered institutions.
They're very influential in labour market.
So let's take a closer look at them,
because they disadvantage a large group of people and
because economies need more income earners in order to be able to
finance the aging population in many countries from France to China.
Women's labour supply could suffer from a range of institutional constraints.
Low school enrollment by girls.
Typical pink subject choices by girls.
School drop-outs due to marriage and pregnancy.
The gender division of labour in household.
And as a consequence, limit of mobility in the labour markets, but we also
see that mothers stands to be paid without a father when it comes to parental leave.
This is often experienced as positive in the short-term, but
as a negative externality in the long-term.
Namely, that is reinforces the stereotype gender division of labour.
Also on the demand side of the labour market, we find institutions.
For example, the phenomenon of internal labour markets
which are career paths within big firms or in the state.
They characterize by internal promotions and firm specific training.
An important issue to institutional constraint for
disadvantage to groups in the labour market is statistical discrimination.
It implies the disadvantaging of individuals on the basis of the group
average of a particular characteristic.
For example, one of the hidden barriers of the glass ceiling,
hampering women's careers is that many bosses.
Don't like to promote an excellent female employee to a management function
when she is in her early thirties,
because he fears that she will take a few times maternity leave in the coming years.
This is often not discussed, but simply assumed.
Even if the woman in question does not want to have kids or
has already made arrangements at home to ensure that she can combine
parenthood with a career just like fathers do and
there's the institution of contracts, and rights.
To start with a letter in the ILO,
which is the UN International Labor Organization.
Countries have agreed to set of fundamental principles and rights at work.
Check out the ILO website,
if you want to know more on how your country is performing on these rights.
The table on this slide is like the other tables that include in
the videos about the labour markets from South Africa.
The sources can be found in the course book, chapter nine.
This tables shows the distribution of work in South Africa over various types of
labour contracts.
It indicates that more men and women have written contract, and permanent contract.
These points at the more precarious labour market position of women.
The table on this slides summarizes the effects of certain labour
market institutions for workers and for employers, respectively.
In the first column, the different types of institutions are specified.
In the second column, you read if it is positive or negative for workers.
And in the third column, you read if it is positive or negative for employers.
Internal labour markets stand to be beneficial for both groups, but
labour rights tend to benefit workers over employers.
Flexibillzation does the opposite.
This is because it generates job insecurity for
workers while it allows employers to adapt easier to changes in economy.
They can hire and fire more easily.
Finally and not surprisingly, discrimination works out negatively for
workers and also for employers.
Because in the end, it's not efficient to exclude part of the pool of talents.
Let's talk wages now.
How are wages understood in institutional economics?
First, I'd like to discuss minimum wages.
Some countries have minimum wages, others not and
they can be found both in the developed world and in the developing world.
The United States, for example, does not have a federal level minimum wage and
only some states have one.
An effective minimum wage lies above the market wage.
This implies less poverty for those working.
Less inequality at the bottom of the wage distribution and
sometimes higher levels of social protection.
For more than 30 years, economists have discussed
the issue of so-called efficiency wages.
These are above market level wages,
which trigger positive externalities in labour effort.
Sounds too good to be true right?
Paying high wages and getting higher labour productivity in return.
So rather than using the whip of low wages to squeeze every last bit of
labor productivity out of your workers, you rather pay them more, so that they
become grateful and work harder out of their own choice to keep a well-paid job.
So yes, there is a logic behind it.
The main issue in a discussion is around the question of unemployment.
Higher wages increase the cost of labour from an employers perspective.
Hence, they are likely to hire less workers, but
doesn't this decrease the demand for labour?
First, let's look at the minimum wages for domestic workers in South Africa.
The labour union for domestic workers has managed to get a low in place that
guarantees their minimum wages.
A bit more in urban areas than in rural areas and
a bit less for contracts with 27 hours or more.
The minimum wage was between 8 and 10.50 rands per hour in the year 2013.
In this final slide, I come back to the debate about the question whether
efficiency wages increase unemployment.
The debate has lead to five arguments claiming that efficiency
wages will not increase unemployment.
First, only a few workers earn the minimum wage.
So increasing their wages above that level is not a big deal, anyway.
Second, higher wages stimulate workers capabilities and motivation.
They're now more likely to invest in training and
to learn on the job, because they do not want to lose the job.
Third, there's a clear positive effect on labour relations.
So, labour conflict will be less.
Fourth, doing the opposite to cost reduction
prevents a race to the bottom where lower wages triggering lower productivity.
Instead, efficiency wages stimulate a positive spiral
between wages and productivity, boosting the local economy.
And finally, efficiency wages strengthen intrinsic motivation of workers.
People appreciate it when you are valued according to what they can and
to what they do.
Any wage that feels fair does precisely that signaling appreciation,
which is much more valuable than simply transacting
Interaction between labour power and a wage.
>> That's the sound of the men working on the chain, gang.
All day long they're singing.
