Criticisms
Many sociologists, political economists, and Austrian School economists claim that labour economics tends to lose sight of the complexity of individual employment decisions. These decisions, particularly on the supply side, are often loaded with considerable emotional baggage and a purely numerical analysis can miss important dimensions of the process, such as social benefits of a high income or wage rate regardless of the marginal utility from increased consumption or specific economic goals.
Also missing from most labour market analyses is the role of unpaid labour. Even though this type of labour is unpaid it can nevertheless play an important part in society. The most dramatic example is child raising. However, over the past 25 years an increasing literature, usually designated as the economics of the family, has sought to study within household decision making, including joint labour supply, fertility, child raising, as well as other areas of what is generally referred to as home production.
Read more about this topic: Labor Economics
Famous quotes containing the word criticisms:
“The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“I have no concern with any economic criticisms of the communist system; I cannot enquire into whether the abolition of private property is expedient or advantageous. But I am able to recognize that the psychological premises on which the system is based are an untenable illusion. In abolishing private property we deprive the human love of aggression of one of its instruments ... but we have in no way altered the differences in power and influence which are misused by aggressiveness.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)