Labor Economics

Traditionally, labor economics studies how employers and employees respond to changes in wages, profits, prices and working conditions. Over the past two decades, labor economists have expanded the scope of their research to include much of applied economics. The areas of research spanned by our labor economists include crime, economics of the family, education, discrimination, and other traditional labor topics. Over the last few decades, a major divide arose within labor economics with some labor economists emphasizing the value of natural (and actual) experiments, while others estimating models linked to economic theory. At the University of Michigan, we have labor economists doing both kinds of work, and we get along with each other! In fact, we pride ourselves in being diverse in terms of methods we use, and topics we study.