Real and Nominal Wage Rigidities and the Rate of Inflation PDF Download

Author: Thomas K. Bauer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9783936454215
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Author: Thomas K. Bauer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9783936454215
Category : Inflation (Finance)
Languages : en
Pages : 41

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Author: Stephen Nickell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780753014493
Category : Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 21

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Author: Mirko Abbritti
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1513583980
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 49

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Standard New Keynesian (NK) models feature an optimal inflation target well below two percent, limited welfare losses from business cycle fluctuations and long-term monetary neutrality. We develop a NK framework with labour market frictions, endogenous productivity and downward wage rigidity (DWR) which challenges these results. The model features a non-vertical long-run Phillips curve between inflation and unemployment and a trade-off between price distortions and output hysteresis that change the welfare-maximizing inflation level. For a plausible set of parameters, the optimal inflation target is in excess of two percent, a target value commonly used across central banks. Deviations from the optimal target carry welfare costs multiple times higher than in traditional NK models. The main reason is that endogenous growth and DWR generate asymmetric and hysteresis effects on unemployment and output. Price level targeting or a Taylor-rule responding to the unemployment rate can handle better the asymmetric and hysteresis effects in our model and deliver significant welfare gains. Our results are robust to the inclusion of the effective lower bound on the monetary policy interest rate.

Author: Steinar Holden
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 60

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In most European countries, the prevailing terms of employment, including the nominal wage, can only be changed by mutual consent. I show that this feature implies that workers have a strategic advantage in the wage negotiations when they try to prevent a cut in nominal wages. If inflation is so low that some nominal wages have to be cut, the strategic advantage of the workers' induces higher unemployment in equilibrium. The upshot is a long run tradeoff between inflation and unemployment for low levels of inflation. The prediction that low inflation involves higher unemployment in Europe but not in the US, is consistent with previous empirical findings.

Author: Pierpaolo Benigno
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1451871813
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 48

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Wage setters take into account the future consequences of their current wage choices in the presence of downward nominal wage rigidities. Several interesting implications arise. First, a closed-form solution for a long-run Phillips curve relates average unemployment to average wage inflation; the curve is virtually vertical for high inflation rates but becomes flatter as inflation declines. Second, macroeconomic volatility shifts the Phillips curve outward, implying that stabilization policies can play an important role in shaping the trade-off. Third, nominal wages tend to be endogenously rigid also upward, at low inflation. Fourth, when inflation decreases, volatility of unemployment increases whereas the volatility of inflation decreases: this implies a long-run trade-off also between the volatility of unemployment and that of wage inflation.

Author: Michael W. L. Elsby
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Wages
Languages : en
Pages : 72

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This paper formalizes and assesses empirically the implications of widely observed evidence for downward nominal wage rigidity (DNWR). It shows how a model of DNWR informed by diverse evidence for worker resistance to nominal wage cuts is nevertheless consistent with weak macroeconomic effects. This occurs because firms have an incentive to compress wage increases as well as wage cuts when DNWR binds. By neglecting potential compression of wage increases, the previous literature may have overstated the costs of DNWR to firms. Using a broad range of micro--data from the US and Great Britain I find that firms do indeed compress wage increases as well as wage cuts at times when DNWR binds. Accounting for this reduces the estimated increase in aggregate wage growth due to DNWR to be much closer to zero, consistent with the predictions of the model. These results suggest that DNWR may not provide a strong argument against the targeting of low inflation rates, as practiced by many monetary authorities. Importantly, though, this result is nevertheless consistent with evidence that suggests workers are averse to nominal wage cuts.

Author: D. Brown
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 40

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Author: Ernst Fehr
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Unemployment
Languages : en
Pages : 60

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Author: David Edward Card
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Inflation (Finance)
Languages : en
Pages : 60

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Book Description
If nominal wages are downward rigid, moderate levels of inflation may improve labor market efficiency by facilitating real wage cuts. In this paper we attempt to test the hypothesis that downward real wage changes occur more readily in higher-inflation environments. Using individual wage change data from two sources, we find that about 6-10 percent of workers experience nominally rigid wages in a 10- percent inflation environment. This proportion rises to over 15 percent at a 5 percent inflation rate. We use the assumption of symmetry to generate counterfactual distributions of real wage changes in the absence of rigidities. These counterfactual distributions suggest that a 1 percent increase in the inflation rate reduces the fraction of workers with downward-rigid wages by about 0.8 percent, and allows real wages to fall about 0.06 percent faster. A market- level analysis of the effects of nominal rigidities, based on wage growth and unemployment at the state level, is less conclusive. We find only a weak statistical relationship between the rate of inflation and the pace of relative wage adjustments across local labor markets.