The course Political Economy of Labour will examine the theoretical approaches related to the analysis of the labour market with a main emphasis on heterodox approaches, the policy proposals that result from them as well as the mechanisms of design, implementation and monitoring of these policies.
The lecture programme is organised around two main strands:
(a) Labour economics, aiming at an overview of the main theoretical currents concerning the functioning of labour markets.The topics to be covered include:
- A critical overview of neoclassical labour market theory.
- Institutional approaches to the labour market.
- Critical and radical approaches to the labour market.
- Theories of unemployment.
- Wages, benefits, collective bargaining and their effects on the labour market.
(b) Employment policy. Employment policy refers to a set of public policies (publicpolicy) placed at the interface between economic and social policy. Being an applied policy is subject to constraints that largely determine its effectiveness, i.e., unlike the normative approach of economic theory (what should be done), employment policy has to take into account the possibilities and tools provided by the economic, social and institutional environment (what can be done and how). The issues to be covered include
- Issues of employment policy theory (categorisation, typology, intervention tools),
- issues of employment policy design and implementation
- Issues of monitoring, adaptation and evaluation of interventions.