Job Evaluation

Abstract

occupational wage differences, and discrimination. The book is rounded out with chapters on unemployment and inflation. Application and policy vignettes interspersed throughout the chapters add interest and, more important, illustrate how economic models are used. For example, Kaufman's discussion of the relationship of auto wage concessions to product market competition is particularly relevant for students in my part of the country. I am in broad agreement with the view of the forces shaping the labor market presented in this book, and my explanations of particular labor market outcomes would not differ much from the author's. Nonetheless, the book is not perfect. First, there are dangers inherent in referring to one's own treatment as "balanced." "Balance," like beauty, is apt to be largely in the eyes of the beholder. Some will criticize Kaufman's expansive and inclusive view of what is the "economics" of labor markets and labor relations. Few would argue about the significance of institutions for the labor market, but Kaufman's tendency to treat political, sociological, and other "non-economic" institutions as exogenous (determined outside labor markets) is questionable. J. T. Addison and W. S. Siebert, in The Market for Labor (Santa Monica: Goodyear, 1979), took a step toward integrating institutions into labor economics by providing at least partial economic explanations for some of them. More development by Kaufman along these lines would have been helpful. The book also falls short in its treatment of labor unions and collective bargaining. Authors of labor markets texts must treat the economic effects of unions, and Kaufman does so. Some parts of his discussion, such as that on the economic forces that may affect the future viability of unions as an institution, are intriguing and well worth reading. But the author attempts too much in his effort to cover unions as institutions-why people join them, how they are regulated-and then the process of collective bargaining, all in two chapters. Justice simply cannot be done to such a complex subject in such a short space, particularly in light of all the recent developments in the field. Consider, for example, the 600-page ninth edition of Lloyd Reynolds et al.'s Labor Economics and Labor Relations (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1986), nearly half of which is devoted to unions and collective bargaining. Kaufman would have done better to simply delete these chapters, because they are not an adequate introduction to the institutional aspects of unions and collective bargaining. Despite these shortcomings of his book, Kaufman has largely achieved what he set out to do. I would recommend consideration of this book by anyone teaching an upper-level labor economics course.