UNSW Handbook Course - Labour, Income and Growth in the Global Economy

Labour, Income and Growth in the Global Economy - ECON2107


	Faculty: Australian School of Business
	School: School of Economics
	Course Outline: ECON2107 Course Outline
	Campus: Kensington Campus
	Career: Undergraduate
	Units of Credit: 6
	EFTSL: 0.12500 (more info)
	Indicative Contact Hours per Week: 3
	Enrolment Requirements:
	Prerequisite: ECON1101 or PECO1000 or 36UOC in Arts and Social Science
	Fee Band: 3 (more info)
	Further Information: See Class Timetable

Description

The gap between rich and poor countries has grown over the last century. A hundred years ago the richest nation was 11 times wealthier than the poorest. Now it is 50 times. The labour markets are increasingly seen as pivotal in the fight against poverty. However, what is known about rich countries’ labour markets is not necessarily applicable to labour markets in less rich countries. For example, while the unemployment rate is a well accepted indicator of labour market performance in developed countries, the unemployment rate is scarcely relevant in economies where people cannot afford to be unemployed.

These considerations raise the issue of how we can understand labour markets in developing countries, how they compare with labour market in developed nations and how they perform in the global economy.

The objectives of the new subject are:

To understand the importance of trade and technology on wages, income levels and employment in developed and developing countries
To expose students to notions of income convergence or rather income divergence, which are often central in recent theories of economics growth
To empirically address the importance of structural change in development with a focus on human resources and the labour markets
To investigate the relationship of complementarity/substitution between domestic investment in technology and international technology transfer from rich countries, the world’s creators of new technology)
To address the issue of labour standards and how foreign direct investments and technology shape the quality of labour markets outcomes

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