"The labor supply curve slopes upward, reflecting differences in workers’ reservation wages (as driven by outside opportunities related, perhaps, to leisure, home production, and economic assistance that can be received while out of work). The labor demand curve slopes downward, tracing out the relationship between the quantity of labor employed and the marginal revenue product of that labor. This, in turn, reflects the assumption of a constant price (due, perhaps, to a perfectly competitive market for the firm’s output) and a production function in which, holding capital and technology fixed, labor has diminishing marginal productivity.
In a perfectly competitive labor market, a freely set wage will adjust to equilibrate supply and demand..."
-- Jeffrey Clemens. 2021. How do firms respond to minimum wage increases? Understanding the relevance of non-employment margins. Journal of Economic Perspectives (Winter): 51 - 72.
Clemens then considers shifts in demand and supply curves for labor with changes in prices due to market power in final goods, changes in benefits, and other aspects of jobs. He never notes his framework is balderdash. Empirical evidence, which Clemens cites, cannot make up for his basic incoherence. Mayhaps, Clemens could read Fabio Petri's textbook when it is published.
I do not expect to read articles about the speed of the ether in absolute space in physics journals. Nor do I expect to read about the weight of phlogiston in chemistry journals. Why does the American Economic Association publish articles that make astrologists look good?
Astrology and astronomer and the Sunspot Masters.
ReplyDeletehttps://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/campuspress.yale.edu/dist/4/1744/files/2019/02/1-s2.0-S002205311730145X-main-19x54rw.pdf
Geanakoplos and his co-authors are very good at exploring models that describe no possible capitalist economy. I have tried my hand in my own small way at such exercises.
ReplyDeleteThe linked paper, of course, has absolutely nothing to do at all with my favorite demonstrations that supply and demand cannot explain wages and employment.