Book Review: Workers and Wages in an Urban Labor Market
Book Review: Workers and Wages in an Urban Labor Market
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书评：城市劳动力市场中的工人和工资
DOI：
10.1080/00420987220080081
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发表时间：
1972
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
F. Kasper
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
F. Kasper
如今，劳动力经济学家很容易被分为两类：一类人热衷于讨论劳动力市场的非理性和摩擦，均衡的障碍，以及经济理论的不足之处，无论是古典的、新古典的，还是其他的。还有一些人更愿意花同样多的时间谈论性。人们期待已久的这本书的作者，以及本书的评论者，可能会被归类为更性感的劳动力经济学家。里斯和舒尔茨曾是芝加哥大学的同事，现在是普林斯顿大学劳资关系科主任，也是尼克松总统的主要“经济资源分配者”，他们分别对芝加哥劳动力市场进行了研究，以证明古典经济理论是理解当代劳动力市场行为的有力工具。这本书可以说有双重目的。首先，这是对城市劳动力市场行为的许多重要方面的一项简单、但异常雄心勃勃且仔细记录的研究。第二，也可能是更重要的一点，这是一次几乎大胆的尝试，试图用大城市的实际情况来检验古典经济理论的某些含义。作者们坚持用1962年（实地调查完成时）的硬数据来对抗1776年的竞争理论。这是一个如此困难的挑战，以至于对结果提出任何保留意见都是极端无情的。然而，以一种奇怪的方式，一项研究的目的越是在智力上具有挑战性，评论者的标准就越苛刻。如果里斯和舒尔茨只是提出了他们的经验结果，与传统的“理论”方向的弯曲，他们将有权毫无保留地赞扬他们的持久性和创造性的研究。但是，如果一个人不“看礼物马的嘴”，应该去哪里看？这本书的主要内容是对芝加哥地区从看门人到会计师的十二种职业中每一种职业的雇员时薪进行计量经济学分析。参数估计提出了对劳动力市场的性质，因为它存在于20世纪60年代初的一个完整的背景描述。这些背景章节（第1-5章，加上第6章，关于如何阅读回归结果的入门）本身就很有趣。第三章中题为“就业中的种族歧视”的一节，最初出现在
Labour economists are easily categorised these days into two groups: there are those who delight in discussing the irrationalities and frictions of the labour market, the barriers to equilibria, and the inadequacies of economic theory, be it classical, neoclassical, or what have you. And then there are those who would prefer to spend the equivalent amount of time talking about sex. The authors of this long-awaited book, as well as the present reviewer, might be classified among the sexier labour economists. Rees and Shultz, formerly colleagues at the University of Chicago and now Director of the Industrial Relations Section at Princeton University and President Nixon's chief'allocator of economic resources', as it were, respectively, have done a study of the Chicago labour market to demonstrate that classical economic theory is a powerful tool to understand contemporary labour market behaviour. The book may be said to serve a dual purpose. It is, first, a straightforward, but unusually ambitious and carefully documented, study of many important aspects of urban labour market behaviour. Second, and potentially more significant, it is an almost daring attempt to test some implications of classical economic theory against the facts of a big city. The authors insist upon confronting the competitive theory of 1776 with the hard data of 1962 (when the field work was done). This is such a difficult challenge that it is unsympathetic in the extreme to suggest any reservations about the results. Yet, in a strange way, the more intellectually challenging the purpose of a study, the more demanding become the reviewer's standards. Had Rees and Shultz just presented their empirical results, with the traditional genuflexion in the direction of'theory', they would have been entitled to unreserved praise for their persistent and creative research. But if one is not to'look a gift horse in the mouth', where should one look?The brunt of this book is an econometric analysis of hourly earnings of employees in each of twelve occupations, ranging from janitor to accountant, in the Chicago area. The parameter estimates are presented against a full background description of the nature of the labour market as it existed in the early 1960's. These background chapters (Chapters 1-5, plus Chapter 6, a primer on how to read regression results) are of interest by themselves. A section entitled'Racial Discrimination in Employment', from Chapter 3, which originally appeared in