Efficiency Wages,Partial Wage Rigidity,and Money Nonneutrality

The efficiency wage theory is generally regarded as a plausible explanation as to why wages do not fall to clear labor markets in the presence of involuntary unemployment. At the current stage of its development, not much is said concerning the role of nominal money and the fluctuations in aggregate employment and output. Adopting the efficiency wage theory, this paper uses the idea of partial rigidity of wages in an attempt to explain why changes in money supply and other demand management policies can cause fluctuations in aggregate employment and output.     

Centralized wage setting under alternative monetary policy rules

Sumary This paper characterizes the wage setting behavior in a totally unionized economy under different monetary policy strategies. The wage formation strategy of the union can be either aggressive or cooperative. As long as the union is fully cooperative and in the absence of shocks, the government can completely attain its macroeconomic targets: full employment and price stability. If, however, the union becomes unexpectedly aggressive, a constant money supply rule has a nominal wage inflation bias under certain plausible assumptions. By changing the rules of the game,e.g. following a nominal GNP or price level (inflation) rule, wage demands would be lower and the economy better off.I thank an anonymous referee for valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Wage gaps between farm and city: Michigan in the 1890s

In the 1890s, nominal farm wages in Michigan were only about 50% of unskilled city wages. Before we can conclude that such gaps were manifestations of labor market segmentation, they must be adjusted by the fact that in the cities living costs were higher, unemployment may have been higher, city workers may have been older, and farm laborers received perquisites. Using some Michigan Bureau of Labor surveys, we show that the 50% nominal wage gap collapses to a real earnings gap of 9 to 13%. On the basis of this evidence, much of the gaps between farm and city are an illusion.     

The link between output and contracts under hyperinflation

In the conventional Keynesian model, nominal wage contracts (acting as a friction) transmit monetary shocks to real variables. In contrast, the new classical or real business cycle theory claims that firms and workers ignore the behavior of the actual real wage and instead generate an efficient level of employment (hence, output) based on a shadow real wage. Using Brazilian data covering a period during which the economy suffered hyperinflation and wage contracts were indexed by the government, results show that these fixed nominal wage contracts did not generate a nonneutrality of money as proposed by the Keynesian model. Instead, results support the view that contracts cannot propagate nominal shocks.     

International monetary policy cooperation in economies with centralized wage setting

We consider a standard two-country monetary policy game with fixed nominal wage contracts. The policy regime is either non-cooperative or cooperative. We extend conventional analyses by deriving the natural rate of employment endogenously through monopoly union decision-making. As unions attempt to affect the real exchange rate, wages are set inefficiently high. Such attempts are shown to be strongest under monetary cooperation. Therefore, in comparison with non-cooperation, employment is lowest, and, in effect, consumer price inflation is highest, under monetary cooperation, i.e., international monetary cooperation is disadvantageous.     

Wage misalignment in CFA countries: were labour market policies to blame?

Wage rigidity, stemming from highly distortive labour marketpolicies, is a natural candidate to explain the overvaluationof the CFA franc after the adverse external shocks of the 1980s.This paper uses a variety of data sources to assess wage rigidityin CFA countries until the 1994 devaluation, and to analysewhether it was due to labour market policies. The paper showsthat wages were high in CFA countries, compared with both wagesin similar countries and the labour earnings of similar individualswithin the same countries. It also shows that wages were rigidin real terms, in the sense of following closely the fluctuationsof government wages and consumer prices, but it finds no evidenceof nominal wage rigidity, though. From an international perspective,minimum wages were not high enough to account for the observedwage misalignment. Moreover, their adjustment over time washighly responsive to real shocks. Private sector unions, inturn, seemed more instrumental in achieving wage moderationthan wage drift. Their members usually had lower wages thansimilar, non-unionised workers, which probably reflects the'subordinate' nature of the labour movement. The most likelycandidates to explain wage misalignment and real rigidity inCFA countries in the 1980s and early 1990s are therefore governmentpay policies and (possibly) limited competition in product markets.     

Monetary and fiscal policy in interdependent two-sector economies

Summary This paper considers a two-country-two-sector world with tradables and non-tradables, floating exchange rates, perfect capital mobility and sluggish labour markets. The model assumes either nominal or real wage rigidity and either perfect or imperfect substitution between home and foreign-produced tradables. The effects and spillover effects of fiscal and monetary shocks are compared with the standard results from well-known macroeconomic two-country counterparts of the model. The purpose is to establish the degree of robustness of the latter with respect to disaggregation and to gain insight into the sectoral transmissions of the shocks.The authors wish to thank Lans Bovenberg, Theo van de Klundert, Christian Mulder, Frederick van der Ploeg, Martin van Tuijl, Leo van Veldhuizen and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on an earlier draft.     

Sources of persistence in employment adjustment - Denmark 1974-93

This paper aims at identifying and quantifying different sourcesof persistency in employment adjustment. Based on a dynamiclabour market model an explicit distinction is made betweenreal and nominal (prices and wage) propagation mechanisms. Thetheoretical analysis provides the basis for an empirical analysisof nominal wages, nominal prices, and employment for the manufacturingsector in Denmark from 1974.1 to 1993.4. We find that nominalrigidities prevail in the short run and that nominal propagationmechanisms play a larger role than real propagation mechanisms.The persistency mechanism identified here are substantial froma business cycle perspective, but not in relation to the spanof time over which unemployment has persisted at a high level.     

Synergies in Labour Market Institutions: the Nonlinear Effect of Minimum Wages on Youth Employment

Empirical evidence on the effect of minimum wages on youth employment is inconclusive, with studies pointing to negative, positive or insignificant effects. In trying to explain some of the conflicting evidence, this research paper examines synergies of minimum wages with other labour market institutions using an unbalanced panel dataset of 19 OECD countries over 1985–2013. Institutions that enforce labour market rigidity, such as unemployment benefits and union density, are found to exacerbate the negative effect of minimum wages on youth employment, while government expenditure on training programmes for the unemployed dampen it. This finding of significant synergy effects indicates that panel data models which omit interactive terms between minimum wages and institutions might be misspecified. In addition, the analysis suggests that the negative effect of minimum wages is most severe in rigid labour markets with high unemployment benefits and union density. Therefore, policymakers need to consider the full spectrum of institutions they face before adjusting minimum wages.     

Labour Market Asymmetries in a Monetary Union

This paper takes a first step in analysing how a monetary union performs in the presence of labour market asymmetries. Differences in wage flexibility, market power and country sizes are allowed for in a setting with both country-specific and aggregate shocks. The implications of asymmetries for both the overall performance of the monetary union and the country-specific situation are analysed. It is shown that asymmetries are not only critical for country-specific performance but also for the overall performance of the monetary union. A striking finding is that aggregate output volatility is not strictly increasing in nominal rigidities but hump-shaped. Moreover, a disproportionate share of the consequences of wage inflexibility may fall on small countries. In the case of country-specific shocks, a country unambiguously benefits in terms of macroeconomic stability by becoming more flexible, while this is not necessarily the case for aggregate shocks. There may thus be a tension between the degree of flexibility considered optimal at the country level and at the aggregate level within the monetary union.     

Sticky Swedes and flexible Finns: manufacturing labour markets in Finland and Sweden during the Great Depression

ABSTRACT

Nominal wage stickiness is a popular explanation for the greatness of the Great Depression. According to the sticky-wage explanation, the slow adjustment of nominal wages raised real wages above the market-clearing level, causing a reduction of output and labour, thus increasing unemployment. Explanations for nominal wage stickiness are usually sought within the labour-market institutions and their changes after the First World War. This paper examines the role of labour-market institutions by comparing manufacturing labour markets in Finland and Sweden. These two countries had quite similar economic structures, trade patterns, and exchange rate policies, but different systems of industrial relations. Results indicate that stronger trade unions and collective bargaining made nominal wages stickier in Sweden, while in Finland, where collective agreements did not exist, unions were weaker, and wage adjustment was more flexible. As a result, real product wages rose in Sweden but fell in Finland. This created in Sweden stronger pressure for reducing labour input than in Finland. Our results show on one hand that labour market institutions clearly influenced the course of the Great Depression, but on the other hand that they alone do not explain the different economic outcomes during the depression and the recovery.     

The dynamic effects of shocks to labour markets: evidence from OECD countries

This paper uses a set of plausible long-run identifying restrictionson a three-variable system, including output growth, real wagegrowth, and the unemployment rate, to isolate three independentstructural shocks which drive fluctuations in those variablesin a sample of 16 OECD countries during 1950-96. These shocksare interpreted as aggregate demand, productivity, and laboursupply disturbances. As a by-product of the previous analysis,the cyclical behaviour of real wages in response to a demandshock is re-examined and two indices of real wage rigidity arederived.     

Wage rigidity and capital mobility in an optimizing model of a small open economy

Summary This paper formulates an optimizing model of a small open economy with a representative (immortal) household, a firm and a government. The asset menu consists of domestic currency, non-traded bonds and traded bonds. There is a risk premium on traded bonds, which leads to deviations from perfect capital mobility and uncovered interest parity. Taxes are lump-sum, so that finance by bonds and by taxation are equivalent. The model allows for current-account and wealth dynamics. The model assumes either purchasing power parity or imperfect substitution between home and foreign goods and either labour market equilibrium, nominal wage rigidity or real wage rigidity. The steady-state effects of a fiscal contraction, a monetary disinflation and an increase in the world interest rate are discussed. The transient effects of these policies are analysed with the aid of a multiple shooting algorithm.We thank Gerard Staarink for implementing the multiple shooting algorithm used in section 4 and we thank Professors M. Fase and J. Pen for their constructive comments on a previous version of this paper. The paper is a shortened version of discussion paper No. 168 of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, London.     

Quantitative restrictions,unempolyment and welfare

This paper explores the effects of import quotas and voluntary export restraints (VER) on employment and welfare of an economy plagued by generalized unemployment due to wage rigidity. The welfare effects of quotas and VER in the presence of unemployment are compared with those derived in the traditional full employment model. We show that a tightening of quotas or VER may improve welfare.     

Nominal Wage Contracts, Adjustment Costs and Real Persistence of Monetary Shocks

This paper describes a model in which monetary shocks have persistent real effects. Starting from the limited participation model of Christiano (1991) with capital adjustment costs as suggested by Dow (1995) it is confirmed that costs of equipment installation and restrictions on consumer portfolio choices alone cannot account for the observed effects of monetary policy. However, after introducing nominal wage contracts as a third friction, the model generates real effects of monetary shocks. It is shown that these real effects are highly persistent for a realistic size of adjustment costs and strongly autocorrelated money growth shocks which are typical for Europe.     

German trade unions after unification — Third degree wage discriminating monopolists?

German Trade Unions After Unification — Third Degree Wage Discriminating Monopolists? — After unification, real wages in eastern Germany rose rapidly relative to labor productivity and despite high and rising levels of unemployment. This substantial and rapid increase in wages relative to western Germany is difficult to explain without recourse to models of union behavior and collective bargaining. This paper applies and extends such models and evaluates plausible explanations for recent wage developments in the ex-GDR.     

资产价格波动差异:由股市与房价观察

我国股票市场和住宅市场的市盈率与货币幻觉代理变量通货膨胀率、名义利率呈现明显的反向关系,即在高通胀时,市场被低估;在低通胀时,市场被高估。通货膨胀通过货币幻觉,影响资产估值高低。股市的市盈率波动幅度远大于住宅市场,股票价格波动主要来自估值倍数变化;而住宅的估值倍数波动小,房价波动更多地受到了估值倍数与租金变化的综合影响。     

Migration: A theoretical comparison on countries’ welfare

We compare the effects of migration on the production of public goods, on income taxes, and on the welfare of residents in the sending and receiving countries. Migration is driven by income differences between countries. Alternative wage adjustment scenarios are considered: fully flexible wages, upward rigidity, and unemployment. We show that in all scenarios, emigration is detrimental to welfare for the origin country. Migration improves welfare for the destination country in the presence of flexible wages and upward rigidity, but it has detrimental effects in the presence of unemployment.     

Inflation in South Africa: An Assessment of Alternative Inflation Models

We consider the relative empirical performance of a range of inflation models for South Africa. Model coverage is of Phillips curve, New Keynesian Phillips curve, monetarist and structural models of inflation. Our core findings are that the single most robust covariate of inflation is unit labour cost. We further decompose unit labour cost into changes in the nominal wage and real labour productivity. The principal association is a strong positive relationship between inflation and nominal wages, while improvements in real labour productivity report only a relatively weak negative association with inflation. Supply‐side shocks also consistently report an association with inflation. As to demand‐side shocks, the output gap does not return a robust statistical association with inflation. Instead, it is growth in the money supply and government expenditure which return robust and theoretically consistent associations with inflationary pressure.     

Product market competition, unemployment and income disparities

Product Market Competition, Unemployment and Income Disparities. — We discuss how promoting competition in product markets affects unemployment and wage differentials. We examine a general equilibrium model with real wage rigidities in labor markets and market power in product markets. We illustrate how more intense competition reduces unemployment. A decrease of markups would induce an increase of real wages if real wages were flexible. This enables the employment of more low-skilled people above a real reservation wage. More intensive competition, however, widens wage and income differences between low-skilled and high-skilled workers. Differences of income distributions across countries could also be caused by differences in the intensity of product market competition.