Curriculum Labour Economics
Labour Economics
How economists study work and pay - why risky jobs pay more, why some firms pay above market, how discrimination is measured, why middle-skill jobs are shrinking and how India's labour market is changing.
- Why Risky and Unpleasant Jobs Pay More How the theory of compensating wage differentials explains pay differences for dangerous, dirty or inconvenient jobs, and why it does not always hold. 📄 Read-aloud
- Efficiency Wages: Paying Above the Market Why some employers deliberately pay more than they need to, from Henry Ford's five-dollar day to modern firms, and what this means for unemployment. 📄 Read-aloud
- Measuring Hiring Discrimination How economists use fake job applications to test whether employers treat candidates differently based on name, caste, religion or gender. 📄 Read-aloud
- Job Polarisation: The Shrinking Middle Why middle-skill routine jobs have declined while both high-skill and low-skill jobs have grown, and what this means for workers and inequality. 📄 Read-aloud
- Employment Protection: Does Making Firing Hard Help Workers? How rules that make it hard to lay off workers can protect jobs but also discourage hiring and firm growth, with India's 100-worker threshold as an example. 📄 Read-aloud
- The Beveridge Curve: Jobs and Jobseekers How the relationship between job vacancies and unemployment reveals whether a labour market is healthy, and what the pandemic showed. 📄 Read-aloud
- Labour Economics: Checkpoint 1 Quick checkpoint - five questions on compensating differentials, efficiency wages, discrimination studies, job polarisation and employment protection. 5 questions
- India's Educated Youth Unemployment Puzzle Why unemployment in India is highest among young people with more education, and what explains the gap between degrees and jobs. 📄 Read-aloud
- Contract Labour and Casualisation Why Indian factories increasingly hire workers through contractors instead of directly, and what this means for wages, security and productivity. 📄 Read-aloud
- Have Wages Kept Up With Productivity? Why worker pay seems to have grown more slowly than productivity in many economies, the debate over how to measure the gap, and the falling labour share. 📄 Read-aloud
- The Reservation Wage and Unemployment Benefits How unemployment benefits cushion job loss, how they affect job search through the reservation wage, and why India has only limited unemployment insurance. 📄 Read-aloud
- Circular Migration and India's Labour Markets How millions of Indian workers move seasonally between villages and cities, why they rarely settle permanently, and what the 2020 lockdown revealed. 📄 Read-aloud
- How Earnings Change Over a Career Why earnings typically rise steeply early in a career and flatten later, what the returns to education look like, and a recap of labour economics ideas. 📄 Read-aloud