ECO 2800 and ECO 2801 constitute the core offering in Labour Economics and the content of each is determined at the beginning of the session. The purpose of the courses is to provide students with the basic theoretical, analytical and quantitative framework to rigorously analyze the labour market. The emphasis is on applying some basic principles of micro economic theory and econometrics to the labour market, rather than on providing institutional, descriptive material. Various dimensions of labour supply are analyzed (fertility and family formation, labour force participation, hours of work, work incentive effects), as are the determinants of labour demand. Various wage structures are analyzed (male-female, public-private, union-nonunion) as are different implicit and explicit employment contracts. Econometric applications include sample selection bias, qualitative choice models, hedonic wage equations, and hazard estimates of duration models.
