Cohort Size and the Academic Labor Market

Educational policymakers have long been concerned that baby booms and busts alternately cause shortages and surpluses in academic labor markets. These concerns have been supported by models which purport to forecast the effects of change in cohort size on the academic labor market. In this paper it is argued that policymakers should be more skeptical of such forecasts. The basis for the argument is a detailed analysis of a model of the academic labor market for economists. The inescapable conclusion is that forecasts from such models provide little, if any, support for policies designed to offset the impact of change in cohort size on the academic labor market.