Stumbled across "What is inframarginal economics?" looking for labor market transaction cost.

<caution: econ jargon>

"Inframarginal economics is to apply inframarginal analysis to studies of network effects of division of labor and various economic problems associated with different features of the network pattern of division of labor."

• "The first decision that you have to make when you get in the university is to choose a major.
• If you choose economics as your major, then you do not go to classes of chemistry and physics, but you take classes of microeconomics, macroeconomics, and econometrics.
• We call such a decision an inframarginal decision, since values of decision variables discontinuously jump between zero and interior values as you shift between majors.
• After you have chosen a major, you allocate your limited time between the fields in this major.
• This decision of resource allocation for a given major (or occupation) is called marginal decision since standard marginal analysis is applicable to this type of decision.
• The aggregate outcome of all students' choices of their majors in a university generates division of students among majors and fields, which is analogous to a structure of division of labor in society."

</econ jargon>

I'm still wading through this. But it looks like serious work, backed by at least one Nobel Laureate.

Why do I care?

I'm digging for hard research and deep theory on how labor markets really work.  

Inframarginal economics is part of this.

Some of the research gives raw material for designing labor market simulations. This may describe how people choose occupations and jobs as emergent behavior in a complex system.

The stuff of chaos and complexity theory.

And information theory.

They also apply this to the Theory of the Firm: how firms choose what markets they enter.

Nerdy stuff.

But I like it.

Google! DayPop! This is my blogchalk: English, United States, Oakland, California, Adams Point, Phil!

Gnutella pioneer Gene Kan has died. What a nice guy. I never liked Gnutella so I found it hard to understand why Gene was interested in it, but he was certainly an eloquent spokesman. [Wes Felter]

[aka obituaries a la blog]