In this chapter we inspect economic mechanisms through which technological progress shapes the degree of inequality among workers in the labor market. A key focus is on the rise of U.S. wage inequality over the past 30 years. However, we also pay attention to how Europe did not experience...

This paper provides a theoretical analysis of optimal minimum wage policy in a perfectly competitive labor market. We show that a binding minimum wage—while leading to unemployment—is nevertheless desirable if the government values redistribution toward low wage workers and if unemployment...

After describing the institutions for health care in China as they evolved since 1949, this paper presents statistical demand functions for health care. It applies the demand functions to explain the rapid increase in health care demand and the resulting rapid increase in price when supply...

I investigate how the threat of union organization affects the wage paid to nonunion workers. I start by outlining the standard model of wage determination by a nonunion employer when faced with the threat of union organization. The model suggests that the nonunion wage will be directly related...

One way to obtain a global public good is to set up an institution to buy it, with the nations of the world contributing to the cost according to whatever sharing arrangements make political sense. An example would be the purchase of the services of national armed forces to carry out...

This paper describes the economic conditions of rural China regarding poverty. By dividing the problem of rural poverty into three components it explains why rural poverty is China’s No. 1 economic problem in spite of the significant improvement in the living standard of the rural population....

I model the labor supply of taxi drivers as the result of optimization based on an intertemporal utility function. Since income effects in response to temporary fluctuations in daily earnings opportunities are likely to be small, cumulative hours will be much more important than cumulative...

Revolutions often spawn counterrevolutions and the efficient market hypothesis in finance is no exception. The intellectual dominance of the efficient-market revolution has more been challenged by economists who stress psychological and behavioral elements of stock-price determination and by...

Using data from the Continuing Survey of Food Intake by Individuals, this paper describes the shape of consumption profiles over the month for Social Security benefit recipients. Individuals with income mostly made up of Social Security benefits and who have some savings smooth consumption over...

It is well known that the voluntary reporting of hedge funds may cause biases in estimates of their investment returns. But wide disagreements exist in explaining why hedge funds stop reporting to the datagathering services. Academic studies have suggested that poor or failing funds stop...