Labor Economics and Public Policy
MIT OpenCourseWare's introduction to labor economics focuses on applied microeconomic theory and empirical analysis, with attention to how research shapes public policy. Topics include labor supply and demand, taxes and transfers, minimum wages, immigration, human capital and education production, inequality, discrimination, unions and strikes, and unemployment. Materials include lecture notes, readings, problem sets, and exams from the MIT course, free to access under MIT OpenCourseWare's open license. The course builds from standard supply-and-demand models of the labor market toward the empirical methods economists use to test them against real policy questions, such as how minimum wage changes affect employment or how immigration shifts wages. No certificate is offered, since this is a self-study OpenCourseWare release of an actual MIT course rather than an instructor-led session.