Faculty

David Howell

Professor, Urban Policy

David R. Howell is a professor of economics and public policy and directs the Doctoral Program in Public and Urban Policy at The New School. He is an affiliated member of the New School’s economics department, a Faculty Research Fellow at the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (The New School), and a Research Scholar at the Political Economy Research Institute (U-Mass Amherst). His research focuses on institutions and labor market outcomes. 

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Courses Taught

Economics for Management and Public Policy   (PDF)

The Economics of Inequality and Unemployment (PDF)

Political Economy and Public Policy Analysis II   (PDF)

Recent Publications

Unemployment and Labor Market Institutions 

"Institutions, Aggregate Demand and Cross-Country Employment Performance: Alternative Theoretical Perspectives and the Evidence," forthcoming in Eckhard Hein and Engelbert Stockhammer (eds): A Modern Guide to Keynesian Macroeconomics and Economic Policies (Elgar, 2012). (PDF)

"Unemployment Benefits and Work Incentives: The U.S. Labor Market in the Great Recession," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Vol. 27, No. 2, Summer 2011 (with Bert M. Azizoglu). (PDF)

"Unemployment compensation and high European unemployment: a reassessment with new benefit indicators," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Volume 25, Number 1, 2009, pp.60–93 (with Miriam Rehm). (PDF)

"Are Protective Labor Market Institutions at the Root of Unemployment? A Critical Review of the Evidence," Capitalism and Society" (Vol. 2, Issue 1): 2007, pp. 1-71 (with Dean Baker, Andrew Glyn and John Schmitt). (PDF)

"Vive Les Jeunes," The American Prospect, May-June 2006 (with John Schmitt). (PDF)

"Labor Market Reforms: The Evidence Does Not Tell the Orthodox Tale" Challenge, March-April 2006 (with Andrew Glyn and John Schmitt). (PDF)

"Unemployment and Earnings Inequality in OECD Countries: Demand Shifts, Labor Market Institutions and the Unified Theory," (with Friedrich Huebler), Chapter 2 in David R. Howell, ed., Fighting Unemployment: The Limits of Free Market Orthodoxy (New York: Oxford University Press), 2005. (PDF)

"Fighting Unemployment: Why Labor Market Reforms are not the Answer," in Jonas Olafsson, ed., "Den Tredje Arbetslingen" (The Third Work Principle), (Sweden: Arenagroup), 2005.

"Fighting Unemployment: The Limits of Free Market Orthodoxy," Oxford University Press, 2005 (editor, author of 2 chapters, co-author of two other chapters).

"Unemployment and Labour Market Institutions: The Failure of the Empirical Case for Deregulation," International Labour Organization, Working Paper #43 (with Baker, Glyn and Schmitt)
Download available at the SCEPA website.

"Labor Market Institutions and Unemployment: A Critical Assessment of the Cross-Country Evidence," (with Dean Baker, Andrew Gyn, and John Schmitt), Chapter 3 in David R. Howell, ed., Fighting Unemployment: The Limits of Free Market Orthodoxy (New York: Oxford University Press), 2005.
Download available at the SCEPA website.

"Wage Compression and the Unemployment Crisis: Labor Market Institutions, Skills, and Inequality-Unemployment Tradeoffs," (with Friedrich Huebler), Chapter 2 in David R. Howell, ed., Fighting Unemployment: The Limits of Free Market Orthodoxy (New York: Oxford University Press), 2005. (PDF)

Labor Market Indicators

"By What Measure? A Comparison of French and U.S. Labor Market Performance With New Indicators of Employment Adequacy," International Review of Applied Economics (with Anna Okatenko), July 2010. (PDF)

"The Importance of Accounting for Job Quality: Charting U.S. Economic Performance with Alternative Labor Market Indicators," Challenge, January-February 2008, pp 26-44 (with Mamadou Diallo). (PDF)

"The Inadequacy of the Unemployment Rate," Challenge: The Magazine of Economic Affairs, Jan-Feb 2005 (pp. 5-28).

Skills, Institutions, and Earnings Inequality

"A 'Living Wage'? Minimum Wage Policy and Employment in the US and France, forthcoming in Daphne Greenwood and Ric Holt, eds., A Brighter Future: Improving the Standard of Living Now and for the Next Generation (M.E. Sharpe) (with Bert Azizoglu and Anna Okatenko).

"Confronting Low Pay: Minimum Wage Policy and Employment in the U.S. and France," Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Revised October 31, 2012

"Wage Compression and the Unemployment Crisis: Labor Market Institutions, Skills, and Inequality-Unemployment Tradeoffs," (with Friedrich Huebler), Chapter 2 in David R. Howell, ed., Fighting Unemployment: The Limits of Free Market Orthodoxy (New York: Oxford University Press), 2005.(PDF)

"Increasing Earnings Inequality and Unemployment in Developed Countries: Markets, Institutions, and the ‘Unified Theory’," Politics & Society, Vol. 30, No 2, June 2002, pp. 193-243.  (PDF)

"Skill Mismatch, Bureaucratic Burden, and Rising Earnings Inequality in the U.S.: What Do Hours and Earnings Trends by Occupation Show?," in Jim Stanford, Ellen Houston and Lance Taylor, eds., Power, Employment and Accumulation: Social Structures in Economic Theory and Policy, (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe), 2001 (with Ellen Houston and William Milberg).  (PDF)

"Theory-Driven Facts and the Growth in Earnings Inequality," Review of Radical Political Economics, 31(1), 1999. (PDF) 

"Skill-Biased Demand Shifts and the Wage Collapse in the U.S.: A Critical Perspective on the Conventional Wisdom," Eastern Economic Journal, September 1998, with susan Wieler). (PDF)

"Institutional Failure and the American Worker: The Collapse of Low-Skill Wages," The Jerome Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, 1997

"Employment and Growth in the Knowledge-based Economy," Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, 1996

Race, Immigration and Urban Labor Markets

Do Surges in Less-Skilled Immigration Have Important Wage Effects? A Review of the U.S. Evidence," essay posted online: Border Battles, Social Science Research Council, 2007. (Also appears as Working Paper WP #128, Political Economy Research Institute, U-Mass Amherst.)  (PDF)

"The Effects of Immigrants on African-American Earnings: A Jobs-Level Analysis of the New York City Labour Market," in Globalization and the New City: Migrants, Minorities and Urban Transformations in Comparative Perspective, Malcolm Cross and Robert Moore, eds., (London: Palgrave), 2002 (with Elizabeth Mueller).

"Increasing Opportunities, Declining Pay: Immigrants in the New York Metropolitan Labor Market, 1980-1998," manuscript, 2001 (with Kimberly Gester).

"Immigration and native-born male earnings: a jobs-level analysis of the New York City metropolitan area labour market, 1980-90," Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, vol 26, no. 3: 469-93, July 2000 (with Elizabeth Mueller).

"The Declining Economic Status of African-American Men in the New York City Construction Industry," Economic Development Quarterly, Vol. 12, No.1, February 1998, pp. 88-100 (with Timothy Bates).

"Changes in the Structure and Quality of Jobs in the United States: Effects by Race and Gender, 1973-1990," Industrial and Labor Relations Review, April 1995 (with Maury B. Gittleman).