Human Capital, Employment and Bargaining

This book examines theories of firm-level human capital investment with respect to topics in labour demand, macroeconomics and firm union bargaining. It covers a wide range of related policy issues, including the work-sharing versus layoff debate, wage tenure profiles, and the choice between pure wages and profit sharing compensation.

This book examines human capital investment, employment and bargaining at the level of the firm. It attempts a summary of results that incorporate both human capital investment and employment decisions within firm union bargaining models, emphasising investment in teams, or groups, of workers. The authors also examine human capital in relation to labour demand as well as the delineation between neoclassical and coalitional firms. Further they investigate connections between, on the one hand, turnover costs and firm-specific human capital and, on the other, unemployment. Labour market policy topics recur throughout the book and include the choice between pure wage and profit sharing remuneration systems, the issue of whether training should be subsidized by governments, and work-sharing versus layoff decisions. This book is aimed mainly at the academic economics profession, but is easily accessible to final-year undergraduate and postgraduate students.