Wage indexation: Social benefits and private incentives

The question addressed in this paper is: Do social benefits from wage indexation coincide with private incentives to incorporate COLA clauses in union contracts? In general, market forces provide an “approximately correct” solution so that legislative remedies are not required. Based on the work of Gray and Fischer, full indexation is beneficial when the economy is subjected to stochastic nominal shocks, but only partial indexation is optimal when real disturbances dominate. If unions and management of firms are risk-averse they both have an incentive to adopt full indexation when monetary uncertainty exists. On the other hand, when the economy faces real shocks, union negotiators oppose indexation if the demand for labor is elastic, but insist on full indexation if demand is inelastic. Managers of firms prefer nominal wage contracts in either case. This suggests that both parties will agree to omit COLA clauses in the first case, but are likely to compromise with partial indexation in the second case. A role for government intervention is indicated only to the extent that bargaining strength may dictate a degree of indexation that deviates from the social optimum. The analysis is extended briefly to other assumptions about the utility function of the two parties at the bargaining table.     

THE U.S. LABOR INCOME SHARE AND AUTOMATION SHOCKS

The causes and consequences of the 1964–2016 swings in the U.S. labor income share/labor share (LS) are parsed through the lens of a structural model estimated on aggregate and LS series jointly. Where conventional models fall short, the present model yields a counter-cyclical LS unconditionally and in response to demand and monetary policy shocks, as well as a small wage pro-cyclicality, via moderate wage indexation. Shifts in automation, workers' market power, investment efficiency, and the relative price of investment account for 54%, 24%, 6%, and 4% of LS fluctuations, respectively. Automation shocks explain the lion's share of the post-2007 cyclical LS tumble and 11% of output cycles, and generate a distinctive counter-cyclical labor response. (JEL E32, E25, E52)     

THE CHANGING RESPONSIVENESS OF WAGES TO PRICE-LEVEL SHOCKS: EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT INDEXATION

The article provides evidence for the U.S over the period 1961-84 that the responsiveness of nonunion wages to price-level shocks changes through time much as the degree of indexation in union contracts does, suggesting that there exists implicit as well as explicit indexation. When coupled with the result from previous research that indexation responds positively to inflation uncertainty, the findings indicate that greater inflation uncertainty may lead to reduced overall wage rigidity. In the context of a rational expectations model with long-term wage contracts, a decline in the effectiveness of an activist monetary policy could result.     

LIMITED ASSET MARKET PARTICIPATION,STICKY WAGES,AND MONETARY POLICY

A small amount of nominal wage stickiness makes limited asset market participation (LAMP) irrelevant for the design of monetary policy. Recent research argues that LAMP could invert the slope of the IS curve in otherwise standard New Keynesian models. This, in turn, implies that optimal monetary policy rules should be passive. We show that the so‐called inverted aggregate demand logic (IADL) relies on nominal wage flexibility. Outside of extreme parameterizations, wage stickiness prevents the inversion of the slope of the IS curve. Hence, LAMP does not generally alter the trade‐offs faced by a welfare maximizing Central Bank, and for this reason it does not fundamentally affect the design of optimal simple rules and optimal monetary policy. (JEL E21, E52)     

FINANCIAL INNOVATION, PRICE SMOOTHING, AND MONETARY POLICY

This paper examines an unregulated transaction services market that is subject to financial innovation in an economy that experiences aggregate supply and demand shocks. The availability of this unregulated market to transactors smooths the price response to these shocks. However, financial innovations act as money supply shocks that increase price disturbances. If there is persistence in the real aggregate supply shocks and in the rate of adoption of financial innovations, then the central bank can forecast some portion of the changes in transaction requirements that accompany these shocks and damp the residual variation in prices by accommodating these anticipated needs.     

TAX RATES AND LABOR SUPPLY IN FISCAL EQUILIBRIUM

A central tenet of supply-side economics is that a balanced-budget reduction in the marginal tax rate on wage income increases aggregate labor supply. In contrast, the orthodox Keynesian analysis concludes that the relationship between tax rates and the economy-wide supply of labor is theoretically ambiguous. Our analysis of a general model reveals that these two propositions are associated, respectively, with the special assumptions of "compensated independence" and "ordinary independence" between leisure and public spending.     

MONEY SUPPLY VARIABILITY IN A MACRO MODEL OF MONOPOLISTIC COMPETITION

The effects of changes in money supply variability are examined for a macro model of monopolistic competition. Increases in money supply variability raise demand uncertainty causing individual firms to produce more for inventory. In addition, expected profits decrease, inducing a number of firms to leave the economy. Aggregate income then falls in spite of an increase in firm-level production. The result on aggregate income is standard, but the results on inventories and the number of firms in the economy distinguish this monopolistic macro model empirically from conventional macro models when changes in money supply variability occur.     

GENERAL WAGE ESCALATOR CLAUSES AND THE INFLATION UNEMPLOYMENT TRADE OFF

The purpose of this paper is to determine empirically the effect of general wage escalation, which is practiced in Israel, on the inflation unemployment trade off. Wage escalation is introduced by including a cost of living allowance variable in the wage equation which turns out to be very significant. It makes the long run Phillips Trade off relation much more inflationary, but does not obliterate it. A comparison with a wage price block for the U.S. suggests that the long run trade off is more inflationary in Israel and that wage indexation is one of the reasons for this bias.     

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)     

WHO IS AFRAID OF THE FRIEDMAN RULE?

We explore the connection between optimal monetary policy and heterogeneity among agents in a standard monetary economy with two types of agents where the stationary distribution of money holdings is nondegenerate. Sans type-specific fiscal policy, we show that the zero-nominal-interest rate policy (the Friedman rule) does not maximize type-specific welfare; it may not maximize aggregate ex ante social welfare either. Indeed, one or, more surprisingly, both types may benefit if the central bank deviates from the Friedman rule. ( JEL E31, E51, E58)     

THE 1920-21 DEFLATION: THE ROLE OF AGGREGATE SUPPLY

World War I was followed by an extremely sharp deflation in 1920–1921. Most treatments have attributed this deflation to a decline in aggregate demand. This paper, noting that the deflation was not only large, but large relative to the accompanying decline in real product, argues that it was caused by a decline in aggregate demand combined with an increase in aggregate supply.     

THE RISING COST OF TIME OF FEMALES, THE GROWTH OF NATIONAL BRANDS AND THE SUPPLY OF RETAIL SERVICES

A rise in the relative cost of time of women has increased the demand for brand names and reduced the demand for information traditionally supplied by retailers. A theory of the optimal allocation of shopping responsibilities in a two-earner household shows that a rise in the woman's wage increases the demand for brand names by more than an increase in the man's wage. An increase in the relative earnings of women is related to a rise in male shopping, the growth of trademark filings, an increase in manufacturer advertising, and a reduction in retail personal services in several industries.     

Production Inflexibilities and the Cost Channel of Monetary Policy

This article shows how the existence of production inflexibilities in the form of capacity utilization constraints conditions the magnitude of the response of macroeconomic variables to a money supply stimulus. Capacity is modeled under explicit microfoundations, where the existence of idiosyncratic demand uncertainty generates variable utilization rates across firms. In this context, money has real effects due to non-Fisherian effects stemming from limitations in households' access to the financial market. Firms' capacity constraints generate a convex aggregate supply curve, which is a feature of the economy that has important implications for the conduct of monetary policy.     

AN OPTIMAL MIDDLEMAN FIRM PRICE ADJUSTMENT POLICY: THE "SHORT-RUN INVENTORY-BASED PRICING POLICY"

This paper examines the optimum pricing policies of middleman firms who carry an inventory of goods bought for resale. Each period the firm in the theoretical model is required to post a price before it observes its realized demand. In disequilibrium situations, the firm's profit-maximizing pricing policy is shown to be a "short-run inventory-based pricing policy" which requires the firm to post a price below the long-run equilibrium price upon observing its actual beginning inventory level above its optimum level, and to post a price above the long-run equilibrium price upon observing its actual inventory level below its optimum level. The final section suggests that the use of such policies by middleman firms will lead to market price adjustments which are both consistent with the "law of supply and demand" and which are based on explicit maximizing behavor.     

By our bootstraps: Origins and effects of the high-wage doctrine and the minimum wage

Conclusion  Although the high-wage doctrine — the belief that the level of aggregate demand is determined by the level of wage rates — is most often associated with the Great Depression, the doctrine’s effects on wage policy go back at least two decades further. Rather than having been a product of desperate times, the doctrine gained wide acceptance during the prosperous 1920s as businessmen and economists, citing the success of Henry Ford's continuing high-wage policies, and the (supposedly counterproductive) wage deflation that had marked the steep depression of 1920-21, applied the doctrine's demand-enhancing logic to push for an economy-wide minimum wage. The authors thank Fred Bateman, Don Bellante, Roger Garrison, Peter Klein, and Anthony Patrick O’Brien for thoughtful comments and suggestions.     

MINIMUM WAGE EFFECTS WITH OUTPUT STABILIZATION

What are the effects of legal minimum wage rates on the U.S. economy? Does minimum wage legislation promote the economic self-interest of high wage union labor and impede the economic self-interest of capitalists as our earlier research [Cox and Oaxaca 1982] suggested? This paper uses a nine sector econometric/simulation model of U.S. industry from 1975–1978 to answer these questions in the context of stabilization policies which hold aggregate real output constant. While most simulated percentage effects are small, those for the unskilled workers themselves are not. A 15.7 percent increase in the average nominal wage rate of unskilled labor, as a result of minimum wage legislation, produced an 11 percent decrease in unskilled employment, 2.2 million jobs lost, while increasing the real wage of unskilled workers by 15 percent. Simulated changes in several key variables support our earlier observations that the self-interests of labor unions, with skilled workers, conflict with those of capitalists over the issue of minimum wage legislation.     

CYCLICAL COMOVEMENTS IN INDUSTRIAL LABOR AND PRODUCT MARKETS: THEORY AND EVIDENCE

We establish the theoretical connection between industrial labor and product markets within the contractual wage-rigidity new Keynesian explanation of business cycles. We estimate time-series and cross-sectional regressions for 28 private two-digit (S.I.C.) industries and find: (i) greater uncertainty is associated with upward flexibility of the nominal wage and moderates the countercyclical response of the real wage to aggregate demand shocks; (ii) an upwardly rigid nominal wage response to energy price shocks reduces the real contractionary effects of these shocks; (Hi) downwardly inflexible nominal wages are associated with downwardly rigid prices in response to productivity shocks.     

Do Migrants Worsen the Current Account?

There is some concern in Australia that immigration contributes to a widening of its current account deficit. Several cross-section studies have found that migrant households have a lower saving rate than the local born households. In conjunction with a well-known national income identity that the current account deficit is equal to the excess of investment over saving, such findings have been interpreted by many to mean that the migrants contribute to increasing the level of foreign liabilities at a rate greater than that by the local-born.
However, it should be realized that immigration impacts on the economy in a complex way through various demand and supply side channels. Its direct and chain effects on such variables as the current account are spread over both the short and the long term. These effects are neither unidirectional nor always easy to isolate. The final outcome, which is the sum total of all the effects, is uncertain, and cannot be fully understood from a knowledge of cross-sectional saving performance alone.
This article utilizes aggregate time series data to investigate the relationship between the current account and immigration. It finds that although an increase in net migration tends to raise the current account deficit, the longer term effect of immigration on the current account is negligible.     

The 'family wage' as a class-rational strategy

This paper re-examines the debate about the class rationality of the working-class demand for a family wage and argues that this issue cannot be resolved without considering the feasibility of alternative strategies. Existing accounts are criticized for their unrealistic treatment of these alternatives and the constraints upon them and particularly for their neglect of the influence of the policies of employers and the state upon working-class strategies. The argument is supported by discussion of the economic and political context of the family wage demand in Britain up to the First World War and concludes that the strategy was more rational than many writers have suggested.     

INTRACOUNTRY EVIDENCE ON THE LUCAS VARIANCE HYPOTHESIS

Intracountry time-series evidence for a sample of thirty-nine countries fails to provide strong support for the basic implications of the Lucas aggregate supply model, namely: there exists a negative relationship between the output-inflation tradeoff and the variability of both nominal aggregate demand and the rate of inflation, and a positive relationship exists between the variabilities of the inflation rate and aggregate demand. The findings differ from those of most of the previous cross-sectional studies, which found support for the Lucas variance hypotheses, but are consistent with Froyen and Waud's [1980; 1984].