Since the publication of The Wealth of Nations, economists have built an entire profession
on a single powerful theory of human behavior based on a few simple assumptions. That …

THE CONCEPT of a natural unemployment rate has been central to most modern models of
inflation and stabilization. According to these models, inflation will accelerate or decelerate …

THE WIDENING EARNINGS distribution in the US labor market over the 1970s and 1980s
has been one of the most remarkable shifts in the structure of labor compensation in recent …

Some argue that the high heritability of IQ renders purely environmental explanations for
large IQ differences between groups implausible. Yet, large environmentally induced IQ gains …

OVER THIRTY YEARS ago, in his presidential address to the American Eco-nomic Association,
Milton Friedman asserted that in the long run the Phillips curve was vertical at a natural …

Workers' wages are not set in a spot market. Instead, the wages of most workers—at least
those who do not switch jobs—typically change only annually and are mediated by a complex …

THE RECENT PERFORMANCE of the US economy has been nothing short of extraordinary.
In 1998 inflation and unemployment reached their lowest levels since 1965 and 1969, …

According to dual labor market theory, the labor market can be usefully described as
consisting of two sectors: a high-wage (primary) sector with good working condi-tions, stable …

In recent years, concerned governments, businesses, and civic groups have launched
ambitious programs of community development designed to halt, and even reverse, decades of …

When asking questions about the labor market, particularly earnings determination, human
capital theory is the most important tool in the economist’s toolbox. However, there is an …