Modern labor economics has continued to grow and develop since the first volumes of this Handbook were published. The subject matter of labor economics continues to have at its core an attempt to systematically find empirical analyses that are consistent with a systematic and parsimonious theoretical understanding of the diverse phenomenon that make up the labor market. As before, many of these analyses are provocative and controversial because they are so directly relevant to both public policy and private decision making. In many ways the modern development in the field of labor economics continues to set the standards for the best work in applied economics.

This volume of the Handbook has a notable representation of authors - and topics of importance - from throughout the world.

Orley Ashenfelter is the Joseph Douglas Green 1895 Professor of Economics and the director of the Industrial Relations Section of Princeton University.

David Card is the Class of 1950 Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and a research associate of the NBER. Richard Blundell is the research director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Leverhulme Research Professor at the University College, London. Richard B. Freeman is the Herbert Ascherman Professor of Economics at Harvard University, program director of labor studies at NBER, and senior research fellow at the Centre for Economic Performance of the London School of Economics.