The aim of this paper is to explore, through a review of the literature, the wage theory and the institutions of the labor market, in the thought of some classical, institutional, keynesian and marginal economists, whose contribution has been fundamental for the economic theory and for the analysis of the labor market in particular. The objective is to show that, except for the marginal economists, the economic system does not converge spontaneously towards the equilibrium of the labor market, and unemployment positions and rigid wages are empirically prevailing and theoretically justified phenomena. Moreover, the flexibility of the labor market, with respect to both wages and permanent adjustments of labor to firms, does not seem the most appropriate policy which guarantees full employment and greater productivity. On the contrary, such a relation is strongly questioned at theoretical and empirical level.
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Paper provided by CREI Università degli Studi Roma Tre in its series Working Papers with number
0706.