The Political Economy of Unemployment

The Political Economy of Unemployment PDF

Author: Thomas Janoski

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2024-06-21

Total Pages: 381

ISBN-13: 0520378326

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This comprehensive and instructive study examines the relative success or failure of government policies in preventing and alleviating unemployment. Choosing two contrasting cases—West Germany and the United States—Thomas Janoski probes the causes and consequences of two very different orientations toward labor market policy. In West Germany, labor, employers, and government cooperate in the running of a powerful and effective employment service. In the United States, by contrast, one finds little state involvement, organizational confusion, a long history of poor funding, and legislative resistance to intervention in the labor market. In the author's mind, these inadequate policies have had deleterious consequences for the American labor force. Whereas a skilled and flexible labor force exists in West Germany, Americans are poorly trained and barely assisted in finding jobs and training. To remedy this situation Janoski puts forth bold and useful policy recommendations, including the creation of a new organization to operate in national labor markets, the development of technical training programs in high schools, and the creation of a youth service to prevent teenage crime. The Political Economy of Unemployment offers a trenchant examination of how modern industrialized nations deal with the vicissitudes of the economy and how they might develop and implement more effective labor market policies. Meticulously researched, it is an important contribution that policymakers and social scientists will find provocative and useful. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990.

Work and Idleness

Work and Idleness PDF

Author: Jane Wheelock

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 9401143978

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Work and Idleness develops the view that redistributing employment is a `feasible capitalist' solution, not just to the unemployment which particular groups suffer, but also to the work that others have to contend with, including many women. Putting the redistribution of employment on the policy agenda opens up debate on how to ensure a more equitable and fulfilling relationship between the ways we gain our livelihoods and the lives we lead. Growing insecurity in labour markets and changing patterns in the commodification of labour have led to a redistribution of paid and unpaid labour time as the structure of power relations, the gender order, discrimination, and state regulation have been modified. The first main trend affecting insecurity is mass unemployment and the growth of workless households. A second notable trend is a gender-based redistribution of hours worked. The third major trend is a shift from full-time waged work to full-time self-employment. Part I of this book presents the main economic theories driving the continuing divide between the intensification of work and the extension of idleness. Part II documents the ways in which the shift to mass idleness in advanced industrial countries has hit some groups particularly hard: the youngest and oldest age groups and other groups, including disabled workers, have traditionally been subject to discrimination in the labor markets. Part III provides a set of policy prescriptions.

Constructing Unemployment

Constructing Unemployment PDF

Author: Phineas Baxandall

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-11-28

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 135116130X

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As the longest economic boom in history has given way to leaner times, unemployment has re-emerged as a major issue. This theoretically and empirically sophisticated book examines how unemployment takes on widely different political meanings and explores the ways in which governments act to change their own accountability for unemployment. It contributes to the comparative political economy literature that analyzes political responses to economic problems. Baxandall reverses a conventional application of comparative research by using an Eastern European case to reveal political dynamics that are mirrored in the West - as demonstrated with American and Western European cases. Using interviews and previously unexplored archives to consider a dramatic transformation in the meaning of unemployment in Hungary, he demonstrates how the politics of economic change depend crucially on the political re-crafting of economic categories.

Out of Work

Out of Work PDF

Author: Richard K Vedder

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 1997-07-01

Total Pages: 407

ISBN-13: 0814788335

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Argues the cause of unemployment may be the government itself Redefining the way we think about unemployment in America today, Out of Work offers devastating evidence that the major cause of high unemployment in the United States is the government itself.

The Political Economy of Wages and Unemployment

The Political Economy of Wages and Unemployment PDF

Author: William Oliver Coleman

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2010-01-01

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 1849808112

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In this tightly argued work William Coleman explores the macroeconomic implications of politically based restraints on competition in labour markets. Through a suite of compact models the author investigates the consequences of the labour force securing the best terms of sale for its labour by means of the electoral mechanism. He concludes that such ?electorally optimal' labour regulation can explain not only wage rigidity and unemployment, but also wage volatility; episodes of excess demand for labour; the co-existence of an inefficient state sector with an efficient private sector; and the preference for a minimum wage over a universal wage regulation. Finally, the approach can rationalise nominal wage rigidity, and not solely real wage rigidity. In sum, the analysis promises to both complete the Classical explanation of unemployment by predicting when, why and how real wages will be rigid, and at the same time to better secure Keynesian insights by suggesting how money rigidity may be characteristic of electorally optimal labour regulation.

Socialist Unemployment

Socialist Unemployment PDF

Author: Susan L. Woodward

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2020-10-06

Total Pages: 463

ISBN-13: 0691219656

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In the first political analysis of unemployment in a socialist country, Susan Woodward argues that the bloody conflicts that are destroying Yugoslavia stem not so much from ancient ethnic hatreds as from the political and social divisions created by a failed socialist program to prevent capitalist joblessness. Under Communism the concept of socialist unemployment was considered an oxymoron; when it appeared in postwar Yugoslavia, it was dismissed as illusory or as a transitory consequence of Yugoslavia's unorthodox experiments with worker-managed firms. In Woodward's view, however, it was only a matter of time before countries in the former Soviet bloc caught up with Yugoslavia, confronting the same unintended consequences of economic reforms required to bring socialist states into the world economy. By 1985, Yugoslavia's unemployment rate had risen to 15 percent. How was it that a labor-oriented government managed to tolerate so clear a violation of the socialist commitment to full employment? Proposing a politically based model to explain this paradox, Woodward analyzes the ideology of economic growth, and shows that international constraints, rather than organized political pressures, defined government policy. She argues that unemployment became politically "invisible," owing to its redefinition in terms of guaranteed subsistence and political exclusion, with the result that it corrupted and ultimately dissolved the authority of all political institutions. Forced to balance domestic policies aimed at sustaining minimum standards of living and achieving productivity growth against the conflicting demands of the world economy and national security, the leadership inadvertently recreated the social relations of agrarian communities within a postindustrial society.

Political Business Cycles

Political Business Cycles PDF

Author: Thomas D. Willett

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 1988

Total Pages: 554

ISBN-13: 9780822308423

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"A Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy book." Includes bibliographies and index.

Markets, Unemployment and Economic Policy

Markets, Unemployment and Economic Policy PDF

Author: Philip Arestis

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2005-10-19

Total Pages: 604

ISBN-13: 1134784244

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In this volume more than 40 leading economists pay tribute to, and critically evaluate, Geoff Harcourt's work. Contributors include Tony Atkinson, Tony Lawson, Edward Nell and Ian Steedman.

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