Primary and Secondary Labor Markets: A Critique of the Dual Approach

Michael L. Wachter

MLW

Michael L. Wachter University of Pennsylvania

Discussants: Michael J. Piore,

MJP

Michael J. Piore

R. A. Gordon, and

RAG

R. A. Gordon

Robert E. Hall

Robert E. Hall Robert and Carole McNeil Joint Hoover Senior Fellow and Professor of Economics - Stanford University

OVER THE PAST several years, a number of economists have developed what is called the “dual labor market” theory. Much of this work has been empirical or descriptive in nature and has been heavily oriented towards the specific policy problem of poverty and unemployment. The popularity of this theory has been fed by claims that it is nonneoclassical if not anti-neoclassical in substance, and that it could solve certain empirical puzzles in the poverty and unemployment data that purportedly could not be explained by the neoclassica literature.