Following a period of relative quiescence, the American health care system is once again a subject of national attention and contention, as the problems of cost and access have resurfaced. We spend more on health care, both absolutely and as a percentage of national income, than every other nation, yet
Archive
A collection of white papers, research and opinion pieces published by IRC.
[A limited number of documents are currently featured below; check back periodically as we continue to make IRC’s archives — dating back to 1926 — available.]
To commemorate the 75th anniversary of its founding, Industrial Relations Counselors, Inc. (IRC) scheduled a symposium to be held at Princeton University, September 11 and 12, 2001. The opening session was under way when news of the tragic events at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was received. Under
In this issue of IRConcepts, we shall examine globalization—its roots and nature, and the roles of private companies, governments, and international agencies in its spread and governance, or lack thereof. We shall analyze both the good—rising living standards, life expectancy, educational levels—and the bad—some of the externalities arising from the
Faced with the need to survive in the global economy, U.S. companies have reconfigured their jobs, making them more broad-ranging, versatile, and autonomous. With those changes have come the need to reimagine how pay is delivered. In this issue of IRConcepts, we examine the changing compensation scene. We start by
An apparent contradiction continues to bedevil the American economy. Business has been investing heavily in all forms of information technology (IT)—computers and related equipment, networking—in order to increase efficiency. Yet the official data on productivity continue to show relatively poor performance gains. Moreover, as we saw in an earlier IRConcepts
The situation the United States currently enjoys—low unemployment, low inflation, and rapid growth—has left economists struggling for an explanation in light of its apparent incongruity with the tenets of two predominant economic theories of the past 40 years, the Phillips curve and the “natural rate of unemployment.” Although the theories