Labor Economics Reading List

Labor Economics

Penn State University

Reading List

The blocks below represent topics that are covered in the course each week along with required readings that are assigned to those topics. Students in the course will read two books during the course (New Geography of Jobs and We Wanted Workers), so those chapters may not correspond directly with the topics. The extra reading tends to be more closely tied with class material or serves as a preview for the upcoming lesson.

Students in the class are given PDFs of the reading posted in the course management system. Below, Amazon links to the book are included.

Econ 315 Course Site

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01/

Introduction

Graber, D. (2018). Preface. In: Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Harford, T. (2017. Robots. In: Fifty Inventions That Shaped the Modern Economy. New York: Riverhead Books

02/

Labor Force Characteristics

Cairo, A. (2019). How Charts Work. In: How Charts Lie. WW Norton Co. New York.

New Geography of Jobs: American Rust

03/

Automation & Transformation of the US Economy

Schlosser, E. (2001). Behind the Counter: throughput. in: Fast Food Nation. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Bessen, J. (2016, January 19). "The Automation Paradox." The Atlantic.

04/

Minimum Wage & Other Wage Policies

Lowrey, A. (2018). Crummy Jobs. In: Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World. New York: Crown Publishing.

Harford, T. (2017. The Welfare State. In: Fifty Inventions That Shaped the Modern Economy. New York: Riverhead Books

05/

Time Allocation in the US Labor Force

New Geography of Jobs: Smart Labor: Microchips, Movies, and Multipliers

New Geography of Jobs: The Great Divergence

06/

Government Assistance & Universal Basic Income

New Geography of Jobs: Forces of Attraction

New Geography of Jobs: The Inequality of Mobility and Cost of Living

07/

Causes of Wage Differentials

New Geography of Jobs: Poverty Traps and Sexy Cities

New Geography of Jobs: The New "Human Capital"

08/

Immigration & The Decision to Move

We Wanted Workers: Introduction

We Wanted Workers: Lennon's Utopia

We Wanted Workers: How We Got Here

09/

Monopsony Power

We Wanted Workers: The Self-Selection of Immigrants

We Wanted Workers: Economic Assimilation

We Wanted Workers: The Melting Pot

10/

Training, Education, & Human Capital

Stephens-Davidowitz, S. (2017). All the World's a Lab. in: Everybody Lies.

Levitt, S. & Dubner, S. (2014). "What do King Solomon and David Lee Roth have in common?" In: Think Like a Freak, p. 149 - 161.

11/

Unions & Collective Bargaining

Schlosser, E. (2001). Behind the Counter: detecting lies. in: Fast Food Nation. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Vanek Smith, S. and C. Garcia (February 13, 2019) "The Strike That Changed U.S. Labor," NPR Planet Money.

Simon, J. and K. Malone (December 18, 2019) "When Reagan Broke the Unions," NPR Planet Money.

13/

Labor Market Discrimination

Acho, E. (2020). What Do You See When You See Me? Implicit Bias. In: Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man.

Brody, L.. (2017, February 7). "The Big Salary Reveal: 12 Real People Discover What the Pay Gap Looks Like." Glamour.

Vanek Smith, S. and C. Garcia (April 29, 2019). "Where The Gender Pay Gap Is Widest ." NPR Market Place.

14/

Income & Wealth Inequality

We Wanted Workers: The Labor Market Impact

We Wanted Workers: The Economic Benefits

We Wanted Workers: The Fiscal Impact

Jadrian Wooten

Economics Educator