Calendar

First Part of the Course

LEC # TOPICS
First Part - Prof. Oreopoulos
1 Labor Market Statistics and Omitted Variables Bias Review
2 The Neoclassical Labor Supply Model

Basics

The Life-Cycle Model

Applications
3 Labor Demand, Minimum Wages, and Anomalies

Models of the Demand for Labor

Minimum Wages

Immigration

Competitive Labor Market Anomalies
4 Human Capital and the Econometrics of Individual Wage Determination

Schooling, Experience, and Earnings

Liquidity Constraints

Compulsory Schooling
5 Intergenerational Mobility
Second Part - Prof. Acemoglu
6 Incentives in Organizations

Basic Theory of Moral Hazard and Incentives, and Applications to CEO
Pay and Unempolyment Insurance

Multitasking and Counter-Productive Incentives

Career Concerns

Additional Topic: Wage Dynamics (will not be covered in the lectures)

Holdups and Investments

Efficiency Wages, Unemployment and Organization of the Firm
7 Search Models of the Labor Market

Partial Equilibrium

The Basic Search Framework

Additional Material: Wage Dispersion and Composition of Jobs

Additional Material: Risk Aversion and Insurance (will not be covered in the lectures)
8 Investments in Skills

Human Capital Over the Life Cycle

Investments and Market Transactions

Theories of Training

Firm-Specific Capital
9 Technology and the Labor Market

Basic Patterns and Relative-supply-demand Framework

Theories of Skill-Biased Technical Change and Returns to Skills

Changes in the Composition of Jobs, Organizational Change, Superstars, and Hierarchies

Second Part of the Course

LEC # TOPICS
Skills Training, Holdups, and Specific Capital Investment
1 Theories of the Provision and Payment of Training
2 Firm Specific Capital
Incentives, Effort and Monitoring
3 Efficiency Wage Theory
4 Efficiency Wage Evidence
5 Measurement, Monitoring, and Risk (Time Permitting)
Information in Labor Markets: Self-Selection, Signaling and Discrimination
6 Self Selection
7 Market Signaling
8 Labor Market Discrimination: Theory
9 Labor Market Discrimination: Evidence
10 Learning and Statistical Discrimination
11 Civil Rights Legislation and the Black/White Wage Gap
Economics of Immigration
12 Theory
13 Impacts on Earning and Employment of Natives