Allan C. Carlson Rockford Institute
Robert W. Crandall Brookings Institution
Stephen J. DeCanio University of California, Santa Barbara
Arthur A. Ekirch, Jr. State University of New York, Albany
Richard A. Epstein University of Chicago
B. Delworth Gardner Brigham Young University
George Gilder Discovery Institute
Nathan Glazer Harvard University
Ronald Hamowy University of Alberta
Steve H. Hanke Johns Hopkins University
Ronald Max Hartwell Oxford University
H. Robert Heller International Payments Institute
Lawrence A. Kudlow American Skandia Life Assurance Corporation
Deirdre N. McCloskey University of Iowa
J. Huston McCulloch Ohio State University
Forrest McDonald University of Alabama
Merton H. Miller University of Chicago
Thomas Gale Moore Hoover Institution
Charles Murray American Enterprise Institute
William A. Niskanen Cato Institute
Michael J. Novak, Jr. American Enterprise Institute
Charles E. Phelps University of Rochester
Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy
Nathan Rosenberg Stanford University
Simon Rottenberg University of Massachusetts
Pascal Salin University of Paris, France
Arthur Seldon Institute of Economic Affairs, England
Julian L. Simon University of Maryland
Joel H. Spring State University of New York Old Westbury
Richard L. Stroup Montana State University
Thomas S. Szasz State University of New York, Syracuse
Robert D. Tollison George Mason University
Arnold S. Trebach American University
Gordon Tullock University of Arizona
Richard E. Wagner George Mason University
Sir Alan A. Walters AIG Trading Corporation
Carolyn L. Weaver American Enterprise Institute
Walter E. Williams George Mason University
Contents
Foreword by Martin Bronfenbrenner
Preface to the Updated Edition
3 The Neoclassical/Austrian Approach: An Overview
6 The Banking Crisis and the Labor Market
8 The Impossible Dream Come True
11 “Pride Goeth Before a Fall”
13 The Natural Rate of Unemployment
14 Who Bears the Burden of Unemployment?
Foreword
Unemployment has been a principal preoccupation of critical economists, policymakers, and ordinary citizens in twentieth-century America. This volume combines economic theory and economic history to provide some provocative insights into how a “modern” approach to unemployment evolved, and why, in the authors’ judgment, it ultimately failed.
The authors raise important issues: What has determined the volume of unemployment in America? Can the “macro” issues of full employment and output determination be explained in terms of a “micro” analysis of leading markets, particularly that for labor? Have revolutionary twentieth-century changes in economic thinking regarding unemployment policies served to befriend or harm workers and business interests? Have good intentions been overcome by unintended adverse consequences of policy actions?
In tackling these questions, this book uses empirical analysis and theoretical insight that are both instructive and illuminating. Vedder and Gallaway are not unique in suggesting that government unemployment policies have ultimately proven unsuccessful, but their blend of historical and theoretical insights makes the case in a more compelling and comprehensive fashion than other explorations into the unemployment problem. Combining the microeconomic theory of labor markets with some simple but powerful statistical analysis of twentieth-century American experience, they present a strong argument for the position that market adjustments explain cycles in employment activity and have outperformed nonmarket interventions as tools for achieving economic stability.
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