It isn’t my normal practice to review technical books or textbooks on this blog, so here I’m just flagging up new edition of [amazon_link id=”0691158932″ target=”_blank” ]The Economics of Imperfect Labor Markets[/amazon_link] by Tito Boeri and Jan van Ours. My PhD thesis many years ago was about the macroeconomic applicability (or not) of various labour market models, and whether there were meaningful links between the market analysis and the aggregate, so I was interested in this book.

[amazon_image id=”0691158932″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Economics of Imperfect Labor Markets: Second Edition[/amazon_image]

While I haven’t read it from cover to cover of course, it looks like a fantastic resources for labour market economics courses. It weaves together data and theory, and the presentation is grounded in actual labour market institutions and policies – minimum wages, unions, anti-discrimination laws, active labour market policies, returns to training. There is a lot of cross-country comparison, a welcome changed from mainly US-centric books. The new edition updates the empirical sections. The book ends with a summary of available data. Really well worth a look if you are teaching or studying this field.