Much has been accomplished in the theoretical and empirical analysis of labor supply, particularly in the past half-dozen years or so. As noted in Chapters 1,2, and 5, researchers may now choose from a wide variety of quite elaborate theoretical models in starting any analysis of labor supply. The developments surveyed in Chapters 3, 4, and 6 have led to a set of econometric techniques that are remarkably well suited to estimation of – because they were developed along with – behavioral models of labor supply and provide a solid intellectual framework for empirical inquiry. Finally, as implied in Chapters 3, 4, and 6, the amount of data now available for empirical investigation is much greater than was available even a few years ago.

However, most theoretical or empirical papers in economics conclude with the comment, “More research is needed,” and this survey of work on labor supply does so also. Indeed, it would be difficult not to do so. Compared with disciplines such as mathematics, economics is a very young field indeed (after all, Euclid flourished in 300 B.C., and Newton in 1700, whereas Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations in 1776); and the subspecialty of labor supply had its earliest beginnings only in the 1930s, with the appearance of studies of Robbins (1930) and Schoenberg and Douglas (1937). Although the past decade has seen many important developments, it is, therefore, hardly surprising that much remains to be done.