THE RELATIVE STICKINESS OF WAGES AND PRICES

While many modern business cycle theories posit the existence of nominal wage and/or output price stickiness, their relative importance remains an unsettled issue. Using a structural VAR model, this paper exploits evidence on the behavior of real wages to assess the relative importance of these two sources of stickiness. The empirical results suggest that a positive shock to aggregate demand causes a significant temporary fall in real wages. This is taken as evidence that sticky wages have played a more important role than sticky prices in transmitting aggregate demand shocks to real economic activity in the post-war U.S. (JEL E32)     

WHY DO ENERGY PRICES MATTER? THE ROLE OF INTERINDUSTRY LINKAGES IN U.S. MANUFACTURING

There is considerable empirical evidence that energy prices had a large effect on the U.S. economy between World War II and the 1980s. This paper argues that linkages between manufacturing industries amplify the effect of an energy price shock and help explain the large effect. In particular, energy-intensive industries are important input suppliers to other industries. When the price of energy increases, energy-intensive industries contract, raising materials prices for other industries. Because of the reduction in materials supply, the downstream industries also contract, which I refer to as the supply effect. Using data from the Census of Manufactures, I find that the supply effect accounted for about one half of the sensitivity of value added to the price of energy. I use plant-level census data to show that the supply effect caused similar changes in value added per plant as in value added per industry. A price increase caused a small, although statistically significant, decrease in entry and had no effect on exit. Finally, the supply effect reduced plant-level labor demand . ( JEL E32, Q43)     

TRADE,GEOGRAPHY AND THE SKILL PREMIUM IN U.S. MANUFACTURING

A number of studies have suggested that countries (or regions) with access to larger markets have higher wages. In this paper, we examine whether access to larger markets affects skilled and unskilled workers differently. We develop a model relating two key measures of market size, market and supplier access, to industry value added prices. We then estimate the effects of growth in these measures on factor returns in U.S. manufacturing industries between 1984 and 1996. We find that growth in these measures can explain around 5% of the rise in the skill premium over the sample period. (JEL F12, F16, L60)     

MULTIREGIONAL FIRMS AND REGION SWITCHING IN THE U.S. MANUFACTURING SECTOR

I use data on U.S. manufacturing establishments to study the spatial reallocation of resources that takes place within surviving firms as they open and close establishments in different regions. To motivate the empirical analysis, I extend existing models of industry dynamics to include production‐location decisions within firms. Consistent with the theory, the empirical results show that only a fraction of firms make the same product in multiple regions, that multiregional firms are larger and more productive on average compared to single‐region firms, and that “region switching” is pervasive among multiregional firms and correlated with changes in firm and firm‐region characteristics. (JEL L2, F12, F23)     

THE TECHNOLOGY FACTOR AND THE EXPORT PERFORMANCE OF U.S. MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES

The paper examines two central theories advanced to explain the revealed comparative advantage of U.S. industries. The neo-technological account centers on the process of innovation among industries and is represented in the regression analysis by an R&D intensity variable. The neofactor theory advances both human and "physical" capital as important variables in determining countries' comparative advantage. Foreign protection is postulated to affect the export performance of U.S. industries. Generally the results suggest that U.S. revealed comparative advantage is most pronounced in R&D intensive industries that give the U.S. a temporary technological lead in world markets.     

OUTSOURCING TYPES, RELATIVE WAGES, AND THE DEMAND FOR SKILLED WORKERS: NEW EVIDENCE FROM U.S. MANUFACTURING

Existing studies on the impact of outsourcing on relative wages and the demand for skilled workers mainly focus on aggregate outsourcing, in which imported intermediate inputs are used as a proxy. We depart from the existing studies by focusing on various types of outsourcing based on the six-digit NAICS U.S. manufacturing data. We show that downstream materials and service outsourcing are skill biased, whereas upstream materials outsourcing is not. We also produce other supplementary results pertaining to the impact of technology, different capital inputs on relative wages, and the demand for skilled workers. ( JEL C33, F14, F15)     

ESTIMATION OF THE DEPRECIATION RATE OF PHYSICAL AND R&D CAPITAL IN THE U.S. TOTAL MANUFACTURING SECTOR

Numerous studies on production and cost, the sources of productivity, and endogenous growth have recognized the pivotal role played by physical and R&D capital stocks. Analysis of the contributions of these capitals often requires measures of the stocks of physical and R&D capital, which in turn requires measuring their depreciation rates. In this paper we specify a model of factor demand that allows us to estimate the depreciation rates of both physical and R&D capital jointly with other model parameters. The model is estimated for the U.S. total manufacturing sector.     

EVIDENCE ON PRICE ADJUSTMENT COSTS IN U.S. MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY

This paper investigates the degree of rigidity in prices of manufactured products in the U.S., conditional on labor costs. I extend Rotemberg's model of quadratic price-adjustment costs and find that prices are costly to adjust: after a year, about 40 percent of adjustment remains to be completed for aggregate manufacturing, while for some industries the adjustment is twice as slow. But manufacturing prices are less sluggish than prices in the U.S. economy as a whole. Thus, nominal rigidity in other markets, such as those for services or labor, may be important.     

FOOD PRICES,WAGES, AND WELFARE IN RURAL INDIA

With soaring food prices in recent years has come alarm about rising poverty in the developing world. Less appreciated, however, is that many of the poor in agricultural economies may benefit from higher wages. This study finds that wages for manual labor in rural India, both within and outside agriculture, rose faster in districts growing more of those crops with large producer price run‐ups over the 2004–2009 period. Based on a general equilibrium framework that accounts for such wage gains, rural households across the income spectrum are found, contrary to more conventional welfare analysis, to benefit from higher agricultural prices. (JEL Q17, Q18, F14)     

THE IMPACT OF FINANCIAL RESTRUCTURING AND CHANGES IN CORPORATE CONTROL ON INVESTMENT AND EMPLOYMENT IN THE U.S. PETROLEUM INDUSTRY

This article investigates the effects of changes in market conditions and the financial structure of domestic petroleum firms on employment and investment in offshore oil leases. Important theoretical issues include the extent to which managerial power in firms has been challenged by intervention from financial markets and institutional investors and the effects of changes in financial control on employment and inventory investment. A pooled cross-section time series data set was assembled for forty large oil companies for 1978–1989. A dynamic analysis of company employment levels and investment in offshore oil leases in the Central Gulf of Mexico reveals that falling oil prices and lower domestic oil consumption reduced spending on offshore leases. Some support was found for the agency theory's claim that lower free cash flow reduced spending on offshore leases in the late eighties. Support was also found for an executive defense strategy (Useem 1993), where petroleum company managers reduced lease spending and employment as an adaptation to changes in market fundamentals and external threats from capital markets and institutional investors.     

THE IMPACT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL AND HUMAN CAPITAL ON WAGES

Historically, economists have taken the position that psychological capital is either unobservable or immeasurable; thus, heretofore, little evidence has been available on the contribution of psychological capital to wages. Using data drawn from two different waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we offer evidence that psychological capital has both a direct effect—via self-esteem—and an indirect effect—through locus of control—on an individual's real wage. We find a person s wage is more sensitive to changes in self-esteem than to comparable alterations in human capital. Both relative wages and human capital contribute to self-esteem.     

OLIGOPOLY CAPITALISM, LABOR ORGANIZATION, AND WAGES OF WORKERS IN AMERICAN MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES

This article investigates the interaction between oligopoly power, labor unionization, and worker wages. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics for workers in manufacturing industries little evidence is found that workers are exploited by oligopolistic employers, but rather wages for production workers increase with both unionization and employer's market power. There is evidence, however, that unionization reduces variation in wages due to increased oligopoly power.     

SHOULD OIL PRICES RECEIVE SO MUCH ATTENTION? AN EVALUATION OF THE PREDICTIVE POWER OF OIL PRICES FOR THE U.S. ECONOMY

This paper evaluates the potential gains from using oil prices to forecast a variety of measures of inflation, economic activity, and monetary policy–related variables. With a few exceptions, oil prices do not have any predictive content for these variables. This finding is robust to the use of rolling forecast windows, the use of industry‐level data, changes in the forecast horizon, and allowing for nonlinearities. (JEL Q43, E37, C32)     

AN EXAMINATION OF LINEAR AND NONLINEAR CAUSAL RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN COMMODITY PRICES AND U.S. INFLATION

This article uses both linear and nonlinear causality tests to examine the causal relationships between changes in commodity prices and U.S. inflation. Prior to the Great Moderation, there is evidence that changes in commodity price indices linearly lead inflation. The stability of the causal relationship appears to vary over time with a stronger bivariate link established before the Great Moderation. Further, there is evidence of significant nonlinear causality from raw industrials and metals indices to inflation with most of this detected nonlinear relationship being captured using the Baba, Engle, Kraft, and Kroner asymmetric generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model. This implies that the observed nonlinear Granger causality is largely driven by unanticipated shocks and volatility spillovers in the run‐up of commodity prices in late 2000. (JEL C18, C22, E31)     

IT AND PRODUCTIVITY IN U.S. MANUFACTURING: DO COMPUTER NETWORKS MATTER?

The link between information technology and productivity is clear. Yet how computers affect productivity is not well understood. Ours is the first study using data for approximately 30,000 U.S. manufacturing plants to examine the effect of computer networks on productivity. We find a positive and significant relationship between computer networks and plant labor productivity. Plants with lower productivity in earlier periods are also more likely to have a computer network, supporting the hypothesis that plants use networks to catch up. The positive network effect remains significant when we account for endogenous computer networks. (JEL L6, O3)