[Excerpt] What is personnel economics? Despite its name (non-economists may be put off by the use of the word “personnel,” which was left behind by what is now called human resource management about a quarter century ago), personnel economics deals with issues of fundamental importance in the workplace. As the editors explain in the introduction, “The literature is distinguished from other parts of labour economics primarily by its focus on problems that are central to business.” Thus, personnel economics is economics, it is that part of economics that deals with workplace issues, and it is firmly grounded in labor economics. Whether you call it personnel economics, workplace economics, an economic approach to human resource management, or something else, the field is breaking exciting new ground, asking questions that simply were not asked when I and others of my academic generation were learning labor economics.