Labor Market Anaysis: Issues and Facts

The chapter reviews issues, models and empirical findings relating to labor economics. First, some of the general research questions are taken up in the context of labor demand and supply, which is followed by detailed discussions on rural and urban labor markets. In the rural context the agriculture and the non-farm sectors are analyzed separately. Four important streams of arguments in the context of urban labor market, namely the agglomeration economies framework, limited-industry based urbanization thesis, contact based migration and labor market segmentation theory and finally, the political vote bank theory are discussed in detail. Debates and differences in findings, if any, are brought out at the appropriate places. At the end, the main issues are listed in order to bring out the policy implications of the study.