generating real persistent effects of monetary shocks how much nominal rigidity do we really need abstract this paper attempts to assess whether money can generate persistent economic fluctuations in dynamic general equilibrium models of the business cycle we show that a small nominal friction in the goods market can make the response of output to monetary shocks large and persistent if it is amplified by real wage rigidity in the labor market we also argue that for plausible levels of real wage rigidity a small degree of nominal stickiness is sufficient for money to produce economic fluctuations as persistent as those observed in the data

comparative estimates of a macroeconomic disequilibrium model france germany the u k and the u s a the paper gives comparative estimates of a macroeconomic disequilibrium model for four countries first a theoretical mini disequilibrium model close to the barro grossman formulation is presented the productivity cycle is linked with the changes in regimes a new technique allows to compute comparative estimates of the model for france germany the u k and the u s a on the sample period 65 iv to 85 iv the results are used to assess the wage gap doctrine according to which the difference in the unemployment rates of europe and the u s a can be explained by a larger discrepancy between the real wage and the marginal productivity of labor on the eastern side of the atlantic

the aggregate labour market an empirical investigation into market clearing for the uk a two equation model of the aggregate labor market is presented as part of a larger market clearing macroeconomic framework which is then estimated by a suitable subsystem estimator using annual data for the u k 1948 1979 taken on their own theory consistent estimates of both labor supply and labor demand are obtained the maintained hypothesis that the market clears cannot be tested againsta more general structural model within the framework presented however a test of the model against the data generation process suggests that the maintained hypothesis is untenable after 1966 which is confirmed by evidence of dynamic instability copyright 1987 by royal economic society

cyclical and causal relations between real wages and employment in the eu this paper analyses and compares the joint behaviour of real wages and employment over the business cycle in the european union eu economies using both annual and quarterly data since 1960 further investigation of the cointegrating properties and the existence of causal effects in the real wage employment relation is undertaken by employing appropriate var models the evidence suggests weak procyclical or acyclic behaviour of real wages relative to cyclical employment in the quarterly data and stronger procyclicality in the annual data thus confirming the dunlop tarshis result for the majority of the eu economies with a few exceptions no cointegrating relations were detected while the granger causality tests suggest either weak or lack of unidirectional causality finally the sensitivity analysis showed that the filtering method has not much influence on the results but the choice of deflator may overturn them in certain cases

growth and defense pooled estimates for the nato alliance 1951 1988 in two provocative and influential contributions emile benoit 4 5 uncovered a net positive association between defense spending and economic growth for 44 less developed countries ldcs during the 1950 65 period apparently a larger defense burden as measured by the share of national income devoted to defense may have promoted growth for these countries this finding was controversial and generated an extensive literature that either found fault with benoit s methodology or else investigated the relationship between growth and defense with alternative methodologies one such methodology relied on an aggregate production function to derive an equation for the sources of growth owing to technological change labor growth investment productivity differences among sectors and externalities this supply side approach was associated with feder 13 and ram 22 when a feder ram model was used researchers typically discovered either a small positive effect or else no impact of defense on growth except for alexander 1 the feder ram approach has been applied to large cross sections of ldcs to cross sections of ldcs and developed countries or to individual countries over time the purpose of this paper is fivefold first we extend the three sector feder ram model to allow for the influence of defense spillin externalities as the defense expenditures of a nation s allies affect the nation s own defense and civilian sectors in either a positive or negative fashion spillin externalities can stem from input complementarity or substitutability procurement practices joint ventures or operational considerations second we check the data for unit roots and when appropriate cointegration these tests help us to avoid a dynamic misspecification third we estimate a three sector feder ram growth equation for each of ten nato allies for the 1951

nominal and real wage cyclicality during the interwar period although there have been numerous attempts to study the cyclicality of real wages in the u s no consensus has formed as to the implications of the various findings for business cycle theory this paper will demonstrate that separating the real wage into its nominal and price level components can shed new light on the interwar u s labor market more specifically we will show that an evolution from a relatively laissez faire labor market during the 1920s to a more highly regulated labor market during the 1930s may have resulted in a more countercyclical real wage rate if we could be certain that equilibrium business cycle models provided the correct specification of the labor market then interpretation of real wage cyclicality would be relatively straightforward during periods dominated by labor demand shocks real wages would move procyclically and during periods dominated by labor supply shocks real wages would move countercyclically in a disequilibrium model context however interpretation of real wage cyclicality is much more problematic if nominal wages are sticky then unanticipated price level changes can induce countercyclical real wage movements that mimic the real wage movements generated by shifts in the supply of labor perhaps the most famous and controversial example occurred during the first three years of the great depression when a massive decline in hours worked and production was associated with a sharp increase in the aggregate real wage rate see figure 1 even greater complexity results from governmental attempts to influence the aggregate nominal wage policies that attempt to artificially change the nominal wage rate can result in either procyclical or countercyclical real wages depending on whether the direct impact of changes in the price of labor on the quantity of labor demanded outweighs the impact of wage changes on aggregate demand and output separating the aggregate real wage rate into its nominal and price level components will allow us to discriminate between these two hypotheses if labor markets are correctly characterized by equilibrium models then the price level and real wage are determined independently and separating the real wage into its nominal and price

labour quality and aggregate real wage dynamics the real wage plays an important role in many aggregate econometrics studies of the labour market however average wages like any other average quantity can change for two reasons either through an underlying movement in the earnings potential of a unit of labour of given quality or alternatively through compositional changes which alter the relative proportions of different types of labour within the employed labour force using data from the general household survey to estimate earnings functions the paper seeks to examine the contribution of these two factors for britain from 1979 to 1989 it is shown that in periods of rising unemployment compositional changes can have a bigger effect on real earnings growth than any underlying change in reward to labour of give quality this raises the question of what economists actually are measuring when considering the behaviour of the aggregate real wage

the impact of military burden on long run growth and welfare abstract this paper presents an endogenous growth model to examine how a government s resource allocation between the defense and non defense sectors will govern both economic growth and social welfare we demonstrate that there exists an optimal defense expenditure share that maximizes the economic growth rate but this rate is smaller than the welfare maximizing share this result can be viewed as a possible vehicle to explain why in many developing countries arms limitation and disarmament negotiations usually have low performance even failing

modeling the defense growth nexus in guatemala summary the defense growth nexus is investigated empirically using longitudinal data for guatemala and allowing the effect of defense spending on growth to be nonlinear using recently developed econometric methods involving threshold regressions evidence of a level dependent effect of military expenditure on gdp growth is found a positive and significant externality effect of defense spending prevails for relatively low levels of defense spending and becomes negative albeit insignificant for higher levels

real wages over the business cycle some further evidence over the past 50 years economists have been puzzled by the movement of real wages over the business cycle neoclassical and early keynesian theories advanced the view that real wages are countercyclical varying inversely with employment and output over the business cycle 12 13 on the other hand early empirical evidence by dunlop 9 and tarshis 25 suggested that in fact real wages move procyclically the macroeconomic disequilibrium analysis of barro and grossman 3 provided a theoretical explanation for the possibility of procyclical real wages despite this theoretical work numerous recent empirical tests of the movement of real wages over the business cycle have reached no definite conclusions one reason these studies have reached no definite conclusion lies in the fact that they have been performed at the aggregate level 2 they have ignored the possibility that the agesex race composition of the labor force may change considerably over the course of the business cycle but the human capital theory of becker 4 and oi 21 and the more recent implicit contract theory of azariadis 1 and baily 2 predicts that employment shares of different demographic groups will vary over the business cycle consider the consequences of changing employment shares suppose for instance that firms tend to lay off lower skill and or less senior workers during cyclical downturns and retain workers who on the average are higher skilled and or more senior than the workers laid off the result will be that the quality of the workers still employed will rise as a consequence the aggregate real wage which is typically constructed by dividing the aggregate straight time payroll by aggregate straight time manhours will tend to rise even when no real wage growth has in fact occurred per unit of quality adjusted labor to reverse the example during cyclical expansions employment increases may come disproportionately from among lesser skilled less senior workers because employment is becoming more skewed towards lower paid workers the aggregate real wage may show a decline even when no workers have actually

the near optimality of adaptive expectations abstract rational expectations require more information than adaptive expectations and thus must be more costly in a standard macro model the losses associated with adaptive expectations are shown to be very small indeed even for quite large monetary disturbances as a result adaptive expectations may be close to optimal as long as the monetary regime is relatively stable further with adaptive expectations fully anticipated monetary changes lead to large and persistent fluctuations in aggregate output this is true even if only a very small percentage of firms behave adaptively

real wages and employment new evidence the empirical relationship between real wages and employment is examined using canadian industry level data for the postwar period the statistical procedure employed which tests for the presence of a linear relationship between two multiple time series places special emphasis on dynamics the overall results strongly suggest that the two series are linearly related

real wages employment relationship in finnish manufacturing a var approach granger s concept of causality and the vector autoregressive var technique is used to investigate the real wages employment relationship in finnish manufacturing the stationarity of the time series is examined and a number of co integration tests for the adequacy of a pure var specification performed the results using a bivariate var model based on a lag structure determined by akaike s information criterion suggests that real wages granger cause employment the slight non constancy of the model suggests however that the conclusion concerning the nature of the real wages emploment relationship should be treated with causion

industrial output variability and real wage fluctuations determinants and implications i introduction the study of business cycles has been at the heart of macroeconomic theory for decades theoretical efforts have focused on providing an adequate explanation for sources of economic fluctuations and toward this explanation new keynesian models have emphasized rigidity that interferes with market forces and exacerbates the effects of demand fluctuations on the supply side of the economy the form of rigidity is in sharp contrast between sticky wage and sticky price models sticky wage models have emphasized rigidity in the labor market to explain economic fluctuations labor contracts specify in advance the nominal wage that prevails for the contract duration following contract negotiation a positive disturbance to aggregate demand raises the price of the output produced in the absence of any stipulation for wage indexation the increase in price lowers the real product wage faced by firms causing it to fall below its market clearing value the fall in the real wage causes output and employment to rise above their natural full equilibrium levels output adjustments moderate the increase in price that is necessary to clear the product market in addition sticky price models have emphasized rigidity in the product market to explain economic fluctuations monopolistically competitive firms face small menu costs when they change prices menu costs are resources involved in announcing and implementing a price change firms may opt therefore to change prices at specific intervals given price rigidity producers adjust output in the face of demand shocks accordingly an increase in the real wage correlates with an increase in output in the face of demand shocks to test competing theoretical explanations efforts have focused on the cyclical behavior of the real wage and accompanying output fluctuations in the face of demand shocks 1 the evidence appears conflicting and therefore does not convincingly support a given explanation 2 unlike previous empirical research on the subject the objective of this investigation is to study the cyclical behavior of the real wage and the relative response of the nominal wage and price to demand shocks toward this objective the present investigation estimates the time series response of real wage rates to aggregate demand shocks in each of 28 private industries of the united states listed in appendix table a1 differences in the response across industries are then used to discriminate between sticky wage and sticky price explanations the evidence establishes the relation between output fluctuations and the response of the real wage to demand shocks across industries the results across industries of the united states produce the following evidence contrary to the implications of sticky wage models the price response to demand shocks does not move closely with the nominal wage response consistent with the implications of sticky wage models however an increase in nominal wage flexibility rigidity moderates exacerbates industrial output fluctuations in the face of demand shocks nonetheless an increase decrease in price flexibility relative to nominal wage flexibility moderates increases the output response to demand shocks across industries consistently industrial output fluctuations increase with the cyclical response of the real wage to demand shocks for example an increase in the real wage correlates with an increase in real output during periods of expansionary demand in general industrial prices adjust independently of the nominal wage to demand shocks increasing real wage variability further industrial real output variability does not vary significantly with nominal wage flexibility in the face of demand shocks in contrast an increase in the price response to demand shocks moderates output variability across industries consistently an increase in the real wage response to demand shocks correlates with an increase in industrial real output variability as predicted by sticky price models of business cycles

tax disturbances and real economic activity in the postwar united states abstract this paper investigates the macroeconomic effects of cyclical fluctuations in marginal tax rates it finds that systematically including tax variables in a standard real business cycle model substantially improves the model s ability to reproduce basic facts about postwar u s business cycle fluctuations in particular modeling fluctuations in personal and corporate income tax rates increases the model s predicted relative variability of hours and decreases its predicted correlation between hours and average productivity fluctuations in tax rates produce large substitution effects that alter the leisure labor supply decision

real wages over the business cycle evidence from panel data one topic on which keynes did not disagree with classical economists was the cyclical behavior of real wages keynes 1936 as well as various classical writers predicted that real wages should move countercyclically quoting the general theory p 17 in general an increase in employment can only occur through the accompaniment of a decline in real wages thus i am not disputing this vital fact which the classical economists have rightly asserted as indefeasible this prediction is based on the premise of competition and a given short run capital stock increases in employment then correspond to more intensive use of capital and through diminishing product lower real wages for this reason evidence by dunlop 1938 and tarshis 1939 that real wages move procyclically was viewed as paradoxical both dunlop and tarshis based their findings on an observed positive correlation between real and money wages which given the procyclical movement of money wages implies a positive correlation between

the real wage employment relationship an industry analysis abstract estimates of industry differences in the strength and direction of the real wage employment relationship are used to draw implications for the magnitude of aggregation bias and the role of employment contracts

disaggregating the effect of the business cycle on the distribution of income this paper disaggregates total household income into a complete set of components and studies the comparative cyclicality of these com ponent to economic growth comparisons of the relative responsiveness to gnp growth of wages hours of work and total labor market income of heads and wives and transfer income sources of households are made across income race sex and age groups this provides a picture of the channels by which economic growth produces income change significant differences in elasticities are found to exist both between different income components and between different population groups for the same component the narrowing income distribution in times of high growth occurs primarily because of large elasticities on head s labor market income among the poor both wages and hours show evidence of cycli cality the labor market earnings of women both wives and household heads is far less responsive to growth cyclicality in transfer income varies enormously between population groups and by type of transfer

determination of employment with wage and price speculation the purpose of this paper is to investigate whether aggregate fluctuations in employment may be explained within a market clearing framework as intertemporal substitution in labor supply and demand an intertemporal substitution model for the firm is derived this model is estimated with a lucas rapping type supply equation empirical results with finnish data lend support to the intertemporal substitution model particularly concerning the demand function specification on the other hand the results for the supply equation are somewhat mixed being rather sensitive to the dynamic specification

business cycle models aggregation and real wage cyclicality a substantial literature has developed to estimate the true cyclicality of real wages that is composition bias free two major issues are addressed in this article aggregation of heterogeneous workers and potential bias in the measurement of the labor input a general analysis of the biases is presented and alternative approaches in the literature are nested in a single framework estimates based on an efficiency units concept that avoids the usual aggregation problems are presented composition bias underestimates the usual parameters of interest unless both the price and the quantity of the labor input are adjusted appropriately

sticky wage or sticky price analysis of the cyclical behavior of the real wage the study of business cycles has been at the heart of macroeconomic theory for decades theoretical efforts have focused on providing an adequate explanation for sources of economic fluctuations new keynesian explanations have emphasized rigidity that interferes with market forces increasing the effect of demand shocks on the output produced the form of rigidity is in sharp contrast between sticky wage and sticky price models the former imposes rigidity on the shortrun adjustment of wages to demand shocks 20 47 the latter in contrast imposes rigidity on the short run price adjustment to demand shocks 2 34 40 9 43 4 the theoretical plausibility of competing explanations of business cycles has stimulated interest to establish their empirical validity 32 28 1 8 11 23 21 26 these efforts have focused attention on cyclical fluctuations of the real wage in response to demand shocks the real wage may move procyclically or countercyclically according to the relative adjustment of wages and prices the interest in studying the cyclical behavior of the real wage relates to its implications to the real effects of aggregate demand shocks in the context of sticky wage models nominal wage rigidity reinforces the countercyclical response of the real wage to demand shocks and the real effect of these shocks on output growth sticky price models in contrast advocate that price rigidity increases the procyclical response of the real wage to demand shocks and their real effect on output growth the results of earlier investigations of the cyclical behavior of the real wage appear conflicting and therefore do not lend support to a given explanation 2 the present investigation seeks to contribute to this literature unlike previous empirical research on the subject the objective of this investigation is to study the cyclical behavior of the real wage and the relative flexibility of the nominal wage and the price level that determines this behavior in response to demand shocks using data for the united states in the preand post world war ii sample periods the cyclical

customer markets credit market imperfections and real price rigidity according to standard theory an increase in demand should raise prices of goods given factor prices empirically however prices appear to be unaffected by short run variations in demand this paper suggests an explanation of this observation if customers react slowly to price changes and credit markets are imperfect prices may be unchanged or even fall when demand increases the reason is that when demand is high profits are high and firms can compete more intensely for customers without increasing their borrowing copyright 1991 by the london school of economics and political science

keynesian involuntary unemployment and sticky nominal wages this paper presents a model in which sticky nominal wages and keynesian involuntary unemployment result as a consequence of the intertemporal optimisation decisions of profit maximising monopsonistic firms and fully rational and informed workers in an uncertain environment uncertainty associated with the business cycle and its impact on product price generates disequilibrium wages and identifies the labour demand function in contractions and the supply of labour in expansions the theoretical prediction of a negative relationship between real wages and employment during contractions and a positive relationship during expansions is strongly supported by the empirical evidence presented central to keynesian macroeconomics is the concept of involuntary unemployment the existence of which once was a commonly agreed upon stylised fact however as noted by hoover i988 and mccafferty i990 among others existing models either fail to provide a satisfactory reason why wages do not adjust to clear the market or seek some sort of equilibrium explanation in which unemployment is not strictly involuntary in the sense of keynes moreover the failure of recent empirical studies to support the keynesian prediction of a countercyclical wage has led some to doubt the relevance of keynesian economics and even the meaningfulness of the notion of involuntary unemployment lucas 1978 farmer 1993 keynes i 939 cited findings of a countercyclical real wage during the great depression argued that the relationship between real wages and employment depends upon whether changes in employment are due to changes in effective demand or due to other factors and recommended that observations on real wages ought to be classified by periods of contraction and expansion an examination of us data for the period 1920 89 presented in section ii of this paper confirms the importance of keynes s argument and motivated the development of the new keynesian model of employment and wages presented in section iii the model is characterised by a market structure in which representative monopsonistic firms post nominal wage rates which they may find optimal to partially but not totally index in advance of knowing product price and of hiring labourers who may have complete knowledge relevant to their choices price forecasts are assumed to be rational while prices vary with the state of the economy the theoretical framework i incorporates all of the characteristics of keynesian involuntary unemployment while not attributing the cause of unemployment to the supply behaviours of labourers 2 provides an explanation of why wages do not adjust to clear the market that is based explicitly on the optimising behaviour of firms and implicitly on that of

retrospectives real and money wage rates abstract in the general theory john maynard keynes held money and real wage rates move in opposite directions in expansion prices increase faster because of increasing costs and a rise in the proportion of product going to profits neoclassical economists held similarly money illusion of workers supported their common view the author s 1938 article rather showed a procyclical pattern significant to macroeconomic models of the economy contemporary literature with new elements of compensation and new measures of wages supports a slightly procyclical relationship increased output and employment in expansion do not require lower real wages

real wages employment and the phillips curve a recent study by bils found real wages to be procyclical contradicting previous findings by geary and kennan who found no consistent relationship and neftci who found countercyclical movements in real wages these studies differed in both methodology and sample period in this study we found that real wages were either procyclical or countercyclical depending on the sample period chosen employment changes generated by aggregate supply shocks were associated with procyclical real wage movements while during years dominated by shifts in aggregate demand real wages were highly countercyclical

economic growth and the defense burden in africa and latin america simulations from a dynamic model since e benoit first provided evidence of a link between the rate of economic growth and defense spending a number of scholars have reported their research on the subject their results have been varied some concluding the relationship is positive others concluding the opposite recently some have argued that no general and significant link exists for less developed countries ldcs and have suggested that the varied results are due primarily to varied specifications sample periods and differences among countries 2 s chan goes further by suggesting that researchers deemphasize the search for universal links and concentrate on time series as opposed to cross section analysis he also recommends that explanations of the defense spendingeconomic growth link take into account among other things a country s capacity utilization total foreign receipts and fiscal and monetary policies 3 the point of departure for the research reported here is a paper by r faini p annez and l taylor hereafter faanta 4 their analysis concludes that higher defense burdens are associated with lower growth rates across countries however i will argue that they have either misstated or misinterpreted their primary result and furthermore that there are some serious problems with their analysis and the underlying model these problems aside the faanta model either already includes or can be respecified to include most of the features recommended by chan therefore i will estimate a significantly modified version of their model for african and latin american countries after attempting to replicate their results for these two regions simulations of my model lead to the conclusion that maintaining a larger defense

new evidence on cyclical variation in average labor costs in the united states we provide new evidence on the cyclicality of employers real labor costs using bls establishment job data for the 1982 2018 period average straight time wages have become countercyclical since th

military expenditures and economic growth in less developed countries an augmented model and further evidence a study of the impact of military expenditures on economic growth and development examines the differences in the results of previous studies which led to contradictory conclusions the authors find that these differences are due to sample variations specificational choices and the different time periods examined the data indicate that there is no consistent statistically significant connection between military spending and economic growth augmentation of the models suggests that military expenditures neither help nor hurt economic growth to any significant extent 2 tables

wage bargaining in a macroeconomic model with rationing a model of a single commodity closed economy is constructed in which the commodity price is fixed and its market clears by quantity adjustment the distinctive feature is that the real wage and employment are determined by bargaining between unions representing workers and firms there are several possible regimes some with labor hoarding the effects of changes in autonomous spending and the reservation wage on the endogenous variables of the model including employment and the real wage are discussed some interesting possibilities emerge for the cyclical movement of productivity and the real wage

the intertemporal substitution model of labour market fluctuations an empirical analysis the paper uses two approaches to study whether aggregate fluctuations in employment and unemployment may be explained within a market clearing framework as intertemporal substitution in labour supply first log linear equations for labour supply and unemployment are estimated using a forecasting model to measure wage and price expectations second a utility function is used to derive and estimate an equation for labour supply as a function of the current real wage and consumption the influence of expected future real wages and interest rates is captured by the consumption variable the empirical results do not support the intertemporal substitution model

the new normal a tighter global agricultural supply and demand relation and its implications for food security the tight food markets and rising prices of 2005 2008 and today have been caused by various factors such as rapid growth in demand for biofuels bad weather and increased demand for meat dairy livestock feed rice and wheat due to rapid economic growth and urbanization particularly in asia and africa in the longer term climate change and growing water scarcity along with worsening water quality will be major challenges to agricultural production and food security this paper uses ifpri s international model for policy analysis of agricultural commodity and trade impact to assess long term agricultural supply and demand relations examining these new global food system realities through the lens of scenarios for agricultural supply and demand indicates that if current policies and investment trends continue real world prices of most cereals and meats are projected to increase in the future growth in demand for meat milk biofuels and growing scarcity in water supplies are projected to put pressure on agricultural prices and strain land and water resources further climate change will have negative impacts on agricultural production in much of the world rising prices and poor progress on food security are not however inevitable policy reforms and increased

sizing up the peace dividend economic growth and military spending in the united states 1948 1996 with cold war expenditure no longer needed our gigantic government expenditures abroad could be reduced and our international deficit would probably disappear almost overnight with the dollar no longer overvalued militant expansion of monetary and credit policy could stimulate capital formation or investment to utilize the resources released from armament production america s potential and actual growth rate far from depending upon war preparations would be markedly increased by an end to the cold war paul samuelson economics an introductory analysis

defense spending economic structure and growth evidence among countries and over time there is no way of telling from economic theory whether a greater military effort will slow down or accelerate output growth the results of a single empirical study have been used to support the widely held belief that in poor countries a high share of defense in gdp is associated with a high growth rate this paper shows that as is often the case such conventional wisdom is wrong across countries a greater defense burden is associated with slower growth in a regression equation estimated for 69 countries over some or all of the period 1952 70 an increase of 10 percentage points in the defense burden share of defense in gdp leads to a reduction of annual growth by 0 13 a nontrivial loss as we discuss in detail below growth retardation to approximately the same extent also is recorded in regional regression estimates though precise coefficients differ from area to area besides slowing the growth rate a changing defense burden has other macroeconomic effects for the same sample of countries and time period increases in military spending are associated with lower saving and investment shares in gdp a greater tax burden and a shift in economic activity from agriculture including food production toward the manufacturing sector when estimated econometrically the extent to which defense spending replaces investment is consistent in magnitude with the growth rate reductions mentioned above in describing these results more thoroughly in section i we review informally the channels through which arms spending can affect the growth rate and present a simple formal model in section ii the resulting reduced form equation is estimated empirically in section iii with the findings summarized above to measure other effects of military outlays on the economic structure we go on in section iv to incorporate the defense burden into the regression equations and data

retailers strategies and food price dynamics evidence from dairy scanner data abstract we investigate the relationship between retailers strategies and dairy price dynamics using high frequency italian scanner data for different dairy products we compute a weekly drift free price index specific for product category chain and type of store exploiting the unbalanced panel data structure to control for unobservable strategies by chain time and type of store we test if unobservables are statistically significant in influencing the price dynamics of each of the products covered by our analysis in general chain and type of store specific unobservables play a significant role moreover we identify the role of some observable strategic variables in controlling or in stimulating price inflation rates we obtain mixed results on the relationship between private label pl market shares and price trend while we find price promotions to be more effective if applied to national brands nbs rather than pls we conclude with some implications for the potential role of public policies in controlling food inflation

real wage growth technical change and competition in the labor market the paper measures the rate of growth of average labor cost and the real wage for the twenty u s two digit manufacturing industries 1948 76 it is argued that these rates of growth give interesting information which other studies on the real wage ignore the results suggest that the gains from technical advance are shared equally across all labor markets consistent with the competitive paradigm a simple and appealing rationale for the observation that high growth industries show the slowest relative rate of growth of prices is also given t he general theory keynes 1936 unleashed many controversies one of the earliest and still topical controversy is the cyclical behavior of the real wage essentially the real wage employment debate has focussed on whether or not the demand schedule slopes downwards and there have been many studies on this topic producing a variety of conflicting findings a common feature of the real wage employment studies is to abstract away from the growth in the real wage that is bound to occur in a growing economy these studies are primarily concerned with deviations from trend or innovations in the real wage and the theme of this paper is that to ignore the growth in the real wage is to throw away valuable and interesting information this information on real wage growth tells us a great deal about competition in the labor market this study should be seen as being complementary rather than conflicting with the real wage employment studies the existence of a downward sloping demand curve for labor is after all not sufficient and probably not necessary for the functioning of competitive labor markets over the span of years 1948 76 i find that individual u s manufacturing industries record widely varying rates of productivity growth however these same industries tend to show a common rate of growth of the real wage this feature of productivity growth was emphasized by the late salter 1960 in his pathbreaking analysis of technical change he writes there is no tendency for above average increases in labour productivity to be accompanied by above average increases in earnings

keynesian controversies on wages in the general theory keynes advanced two hypotheses about movements in wages and urged their empirical investigation john dunlop lorie tarshis and henry richardson responded to this call with articles published in the economic journal in the late 1930s in turn keynes replied to their findings this exchange is described and the subsequent literature on the cyclical movement of real wages and the rigidity of money wages is outlined

price level determinacy with an interest rate policy rule and rational expectations abstract this paper reconsiders a result obtained by sargent and wallace namely that price level indeterminacy obtains in their model if the monetary authorities adopt a feedback rule for the interest rate rather than the money stock it is shown that the indeterminacy vanishes if the interest rate rule is chosen so as to have a desired effect on the expected quantity of money demanded this holds even if considerable weight is given in the choice of a rule to the aim of smoothing interest rate fluctuations

non nested tests of efficient bargain and labour demand models abstract in this paper efficient bargain and labour demand models derived from a variety of product market structures are compared using non nested test procedures data on wage employment outcomes are drawn from actual contract data from the canadian unionised sector results indicate that efficient bargain models are preferred to labour demand models

changes in the cyclical pattern of real wages evidence from nine countries 1955 80 monetary policy in the united kingdom the monetarist vice has gripped the economy even longer and similar deflationary policies have been in effect in other western economies interestingly enough these policies were instituted in the context of a prolonged period of economic decline annual average rates of growth of gross domestic product for nine oecd countries fell from 6 8 to 5 o to 2 6 over the periods i955 66 i966 73 and i973 79 2 similarly unemployment has risen dramatically in the last io years the causes of slow growth and high unemployment are undoubtedly various however it is clear that restrictive macroeconomic policy has played an important role that is the recent situation is at least in part attributable to a deliberate effort to induce an economic slump the task of systematically examining the origins and motivations of this policy still awaits us however this paper presents an account of a general development in the pattern of real wages over the business cycle which is a plausible determinant of current policy the evidence indicates that short run cyclical movements in output no longer exert a determinate influence on real wage growth a development which may have been the impetus for long term deflation this account is based on an econometric study of nine countries over the period i955 80 the study has three noteworthy econometric features the first is that data from the nine countries are combined in a pooled model with homogeneous coefficients the use of a cross national sample ensures against the attribution of general theoretical status to particular empirical findings from a single country 3 second the units of observation are business cycle turning

the conformity of wage indexation models with stylized facts in a recent paper bennett mccallum 1982 lists what he considers to be prominent empirical regularities or stylized facts of aggregate economies in particular he notes that output and employment magnitudes are strongly related to contemporaneous money stock surprises but that output and employment magnitudes are not strongly and positively related to contemporaneous price level surprises p 4 these facts have prompted mccallum and others to develop models of the economy where prices as well as wages are predetermined the main feature of such models is their abandonment of aggregate supply formulations where price level disturbances provide a channel for the real effects of money the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the consistency of familiar gray and fischer wage indexing models and their implied aggregate supply relationship with the stylized facts see joanna gray 1976 stanley fischer 1977 in a model where the nominal wage is indexed to the price level the efficient use of the information conveyed by the price level imposes qualitative restrictions on the covariance matrix of disturbances first the correlation between the price level and innovations in the deviation of actual output from the full information output level will be zero second because the money supply contains information about real disturbances that is not conveyed by the price level the correlation between money supply innovations and innovations in the deviation of output from the full information level will be positive third the regression of innovations in actual output on the price level will provide an estimate of the optimal degree of indexation evidence that is generally consistent with these properties of wage indexation models is found in quarterly data for the five largest oecd countries consider the familiar aggregate formulation 1

alternative econometric approaches for analysing the role of the financial sector in economic growth time series evidence from ldcs abstract the study determines and analyses the effects of financial intermediation on the growth of real gdp in ldcs by employing annual data for 71 countries over varying periods that generally span the 1960s and 1980s based on the modified version of the orthodox model framework and an entirely new model framework that recognizes the external effects of the financial sector on the real sector as well as effects of the financial sector on the productivities of factor inputs engaged therein we estimate regression equations for each country our findings are as follows a financial intermediation promotes economic growth in about 85 of the countries b as compared with factors that have often been emphasized in the literature viz export expansion capital formation ratio and labour force growth as important growth promoters financial intermediation is practically at par with export expansion and capital formation ratio and superior to labour force growth as partners in promoting economic growth c the growth promoting effects of financial intermediation are more predominant in low income than in high income ldcs and d the growth promoting effects of financial intermediation are practically invariant across the various regions of the globe

granger causality real factor prices and employment a re appraisal with uk data this paper reports the results produced by applying tests for granger causality of post war u k real wage and employment data the results suggest that real wages granger cause employment with no feedback this result is robust to the inclusion of real materials prices the results are not robust to changes in the sample period real wages and employment appear independent with data up to 1977 4 the oscillations of real wages between 1976 and 1978 when a stern wage policy was implemented and dismantled are responsible for these different results this explains the contradictory results reported in previous studies

discretion wage indexation and inflation it is now well understood that discretionary policy making frequently leads to socially sub optimal outcomes this point was first made by kydland and prescott 12 using an example of a monetary policy game they argued that in the presence of output distortions in the economy the monetary authority has an incentive to renege on earlier promises to maintain price stability by expanding the money supply in order to create unexpected inflation thereby increasing output and employment since private wage setters form expectations rationally this policy action is anticipated and in equilibrium leads to excessive inflation without any resulting change in output or employment consequently in the absence of enforceable policy rules the time consistent discretionary monetary path produces a socially sub optimal inflation rate this form of policy behavior has important implications for the decisions of private agents such as their choice of the degree of wage indexation however most work in the literature on endogenous wage indexation stemming from the seminal paper by gray 10 has analyzed the equilibrium indexation choice assuming either a constant money growth rule 1 or a monetary rule involving lagged or contemporaneous feedback 8 17 only the recent papers by devereux 5 6 have attempted to examine the implications of time consistent discretionary monetary policy for endogenous wage indexation the informational structure he considers has the monetary authority setting the money stock prior to the realization of shocks so that the authority has no information regarding current period disturbances when determining its course of action this assumption precludes any contemporaneous attempt by the monetary authority to stabilize output or the price level devereux reaches the conclusion that wage setters who are aware of the authority s policy decision will find it optimal to index positively to unanticipated price level surprises since none of the aggregate shocks are offset directly by the monetary authority thus the informational environment confronting the authority influences the degree of indexation and subsequently the manner in which aggregate demand and supply variability impinge upon social welfare

defence spending economic growth and temporal causality evidence from taiwan and mainland china 1952 1995 this paper uses a cointegration analysis and a vector autoregressive model var to examine the causal relationship between defence spending and economic growth for taiwan and mainland china over the period 1952 1995 it is found that these two variables are not cointegrated for both countries studied the results of the granger causality tests suggest bidirectional granger causality feedback between defence spending and economic growth for taiwan unidirectional granger causality running from economic growth to defence spending for mainland china and unidirectional granger causality running from taiwan s defence spending to mainland china s defence spending for cross country studied these results further indicate that there exists no arms race between two countries from both sides of taiwan strait furthermore impulse responses and variance decompositions are incorporated into the analysis the results from the impulse responses and variance decompositions tell a similar story

the relative adjustment of wages and prices direct tests within a multiple equation system in order to assess the relative rigidity of the aggregate price level and the nominal wage rate most researchers have focused on the implied behaviour of the real wage rate in response to a purely demand disturbance the present work examines the explicit behaviour of the two variables and is therefore able to analyse the variables short run responses within the context of their defined long run behaviour while the paper reports evidence of long run stability in the real wage rate additional evidence is presented which supports both sticky price and sticky wage models the determining factor is the choice of lag

the anticipated real interest rate capital utilization and the cyclical pattern of real wages abstract this paper develops a channel through which increases in anticipated real interest rates can be expansionary for current aggregate labor demand and current output supply the key feature of the model is the introduction of a user cost of capital utilization which confronts the firm with the intertemporal problem of the optimal choices of capital utilization and depreciation the resulting variation in capital utilization and capital services in response to fluctuations in the real rate of interest shifts the marginal product of labor and thus the demand for labor at the same time and in the same direction that lucas rapping real interest rate effects operate on labor supply the complete model places no a priori restrictions on the cyclical pattern of real wages thus avoiding the countercyclical real wage prediction made by keynes and various classical writers that is rejected by the data estimates of a labor demand schedule for the annual u s data reveal a significantly positive real interest rate effect

the real wage employment relationship in the united states this article examines the real wage employment relationship in the united states in the light of the diversity of results in the literature it demonstrates that when the relationship is correctly specified in the sense that due allowance is made for technical progress and capital accumulation and the appropriate value added deflator is used for the wage then a negative relationship may be observed in the data an incorrect specification however is as likely to lead to a positive relationship as a negative one

relative prices and the demand for labour in british manufacturing the existence of an aggregate demand for labour schedule derived from profit maximization of the individual firm and giving a negative relationship between the labour capital ratio and the real wage is central to most traditional theoretical macroeconomics even though such a relationship is typically not embodied in macroeconomic models but beginning with the work of dunlop 1938 and tarshis 1939 the negative relationship could not be found in the data a more modern reference is bodkin 1969 this evidence led naturally to disequilibrium analysis notably that of barro and grossman 1971 more recently sargent 1978 has attempted with some success to rehabilitate the demand for labour schedule by showing that costly adjustment of the workforce obscures the current relationship between the wage and labour demand while leaving it essentially intact that paper and the related one by neftci 1978 was criticized by geary and kennan 1979 because it had used retail prices to represent output prices and they showed that for a number of countries employment could not be explained satisfactorily by the real product wage however geary and kennan failed to allow for the simultaneous effect of the real prices of raw materials and capital services in this paper we shall see that allowing for the effects of other relative prices notably the price of inputs relative to output and the real interest rate the real wage has a powerful but slow acting negative effect on the demand for labour the long run elasticity is about 2 and the mean lag is over 18 months we also find that the price of inputs has a long run elasticity of about 2 and that high values of the real interest rate have a powerful depressant effect on the level of employment in manufacturing the most striking implication for policy of our analysis is that measures of demand output money government spending do not have a significant influence on manufacturing employment controlling for the effects of relative prices thus government macroeconomic policy can affect the level of employment in manufacturing if and only if it can affect relative prices

real wages over the business cycle a band spectrum approach this paper presents new evidence on the cyclical relationship between real wages and aggregate employment as is well known models that attribute fluctuations in output to movements in aggregate demand and retain the assumption of flexible product prices the adpf hypothesis imply countercyclical real wage movements as employment adjusts along a downward sloping aggregate demand for labor schedule in contrast real business cycle theories 10 15 13 suggest procyclical movements as workers substitute work for leisure along dynamic labor supply schedules the empirical evidence on these propositions remains mixed some influential studies report a negative relationship 4 5 25 others report a positive relationship 2 12 18 and geary and kennan gk 7 to identify the purely business cycle correlation and distinguish it from correlations at very high and very low frequencies the frequency domain decomposition provides a simple framework for reconciling the conflicting conclusions of previous studies and for focusing attention on the business cycle relationship i show that the highly significant positive or negative correlations reported in previous studies are attributable to variations at frequencies far too high or far too low to be associated with the business cycle the true business cycle relationship is quite different from that revealed by simple regressions of real wages on employment i find a weak but statistically significant negative relationship over business cycle frequencies for the post war u s data when wages are deflated by the producer price index ppi the negative relationship is particularly strong over the subperiod 1947 70 but becomes weak and insignificant over the last sixteen years 1971 86 this finding is consistent with the widely held belief that in the former period cyclical movements in employment were determined by changes in aggregate demand while real shocks dominated in the 1970s however when wages are deflated by the consumer price index cpi the business cycle relationship is weak and not statistically significant over both subperiods these results contrast sharply with those of previous studies that do not isolate business cycle components

implications of fossil fuel constraints on economic growth and global warming abstract energy security and global warming are analysed as 21st century sustainability threats best estimates of future energy availability are derived as an energy reference case erc an explicit economic growth model is used to interpret the impact of the erc on economic growth the model predicts a divergence from 20th century equilibrium conditions in economic growth and socio economic welfare is only stabilised under optimistic assumptions that demands a paradigm shift in contemporary economic thought and focused attention from policy makers fossil fuel depletion also constrains the maximum extent of global warming carbon emissions from the erc comply nominally with the b1 scenario which is the lowest emissions case considered by the ipcc the ipcc predicts a temperature response within acceptance limits of the global warming debate for the b1 scenario the carbon feedback cycle used in the ipcc models is shown as invalid for low emissions scenarios and an alternative carbon cycle reduces the temperature response for the erc considerably compared to the ipcc predictions our analysis proposes that the extent of global warming may be acceptable and preferable compared to the socio economic consequences of not exploiting fossil fuel reserves to their full technical potential

the transmission of disturbances under alternative exchange rate regimes with optimal indexing the paper develops a general stochastic macroeconomic model that can be used to study the international transmission of disturbances under four alternative exchange rate systems uniform flexible exchange rates uniform fixed exchange rates and two versions of two tier exchange rates the analysis makes two general points first one cannot assume stability of structure when assessing the consequences of alternative exchange rate regimes for example the slope of the aggregate supply curve and the rationally formed expectations in the asset markets can respond dramatically to the government s choice of exchange rate regime second exchange rate regimes that provide full insulation from foreign disturbances may nevertheless be inferior to other regimes in terms of their ability to maximize social welfare

neoclassical demand for labour functions for six major economies can real factor prices and in particular the real wage explain the level of employment over the business cycle the question is of fundamental importance for macroeconomic policy and is of course the subject of longstanding controversy dunlop i938 failed to find the expected negative relationship between employment and the wage in the data and the subsequent debate is summarised in bodkin i969 crudely the data seemed to refute the competitive model of the labour market for if product markets are competitive and firms operate on their demand curves employment should be explained by real factor prices relative to product prices the capital stock and the state of technology to explain the lack of relationship barro and grossman i97i suggested that at times mutuality reinforcing quantity constraints could emerge in labour and output markets so that firms employed fewer workers than one would predict from the level of real wages and other relative prices however recently sargent i978 has attempted with some success to rehabilitate the demand for labour function by showing that costly adjustment of the workforce obscures the current relationship between the wage and labour demand while leaving it essentially intact in his account firms adjust slowly towards an employment level which is influenced by future expected real wages which might themselves reflect the past history of real wages his paper and the related one by neftci i978 was criticised by geary and kennan i979 for using retail prices to represent output prices and they showed for a number of countries that employment could not be satisfactorily explained by the real product wage taken on its own however geary and kennan failed to allow for the simultaneous effect of the real price of raw materials in symons i 982 one of us showed that allowing for this effect the real wage has a powerful elasticity about 2 but slow acting two year mean lag negative effect of the demand for labour in british manufacturing this was strong evidence but it was not completely conclusive the model fitted well only over subperiods and whereas the various breakdowns of the model could be ascribed to firms discounting certain transient shifts in the real wage there still seemed to be scope for reasonable doubt about the results however recently andrews and nickell i 982 a b working with annual rather than quarterly data and for the british economy as a whole have developed a demand for labour function with similar dynamics and with signifi

real wage and real labour cost growth 1948 81 a disaggregated study the paper examines growth rates in labour cost and real wages for up to 38 separate uk industry categories this reveals much interesting information about labour markets which is ignored in most studies of the real wage the latter are mostly concerned with disequilibrium behaviour of the real wage the theoretical section of the paper explores the relationship between the growth rates in productivity real wages labour costs profit rates and value added prices relative to average prices under the assumption that factor markets are competitive the second section computes these respective growth rates and explores how well the competitive hypothesis stands up the results indicate reasonable agreement with the competitive thesis

why are wages cyclical in the 1970 s this article investigates cyclicality in real wages between 1969 and 1982 using panel study of income dynamics data there is little evidence that movements in and out of the labor market induced aggregate wage cyclicality during these years however cyclicality in the movement of workers between heterogeneous labor market sectors affected aggregate wage cyclicality while sector location is important sector selectivity is not correlated with wages yet even within sectors cyclicality is present in real wages over this time period and is the result of cyclicality in overall wage levels as well as in the coefficients associated with particular worker characteristics

interest rate innovations and the business cycle abstract recent evidence from vector autoregressions points towards the importance of interest rate innovations in explaining output variations we show that this evidence supports an interpretation of business cycles based on nominal contractual rigidities rather than cotinuous market clearing

the employment real wage relationship an international study the neoclassical and keynesian theories of employment both predict an inverse relationship between employment and real wages in the short run the observed correlation between employment and real wages however has usually failed to conform to this prediction dunlop 1938 and tarshis 1939 reported a positive correlation between real and money wages which given procyclical movement of money wages was interpreted as evidence against the theoretical prediction the statistical significance of these results was however challenged by ruggles 1940 and tobin 1948 more recent studies by kuh 1966 and bodkin 1969 failed to detect a significant relationship between real wages and employment these findings stimulated a series of contributions by solow and stiglitz 1968 barro and grossman 1971 1976 and others developing alternative models not apparently refuted by the evidence barro and grossman recast macro theory under the assumption that markets did not clear modigliani 1977 argued that the observed relationship between employment and real wages could be accounted for in an oligopolistic model of firm behavior thus both the competitive and equilibrium assumptions of the classical model were diagnosed as the sources of its apparent empirical refutation

do trade unions reduce job opportunities of non members this paper examines the structure of the optimal contract that would be chosen by a self interested trade union that represents the interests of some set of m members when it is assumed that there exists a pool of unemployed workers outside the union whose opportunity cost of working is such that they would at least in some states of demand have been employed in a competitive labor market the authors compare wage and employment levels under such a contract with those that would be observed in competitive markets in particular focusing on the impact of the union on the employment opportunities and welfare of non union members copyright 1989 by royal economic society

the information content of the interest rate and optimal monetary policy optimal monetary policy rules are derived in a rational expectations cum contracting framework monetary policy is redundant if wage setters exploit the incomplete current information embodied in today s nominal interest rate however the monetary authorities can save wage setters the costs of indexing to the interest rate a contemporaneous money supply feedback rule is as effective as wage indexation a lagged rule relevant under a regime of money supply targeting is also as effective if investors use the interest rate both rules have the same implications for the real interest rate as poole s combination policy however the two rules have strikingly different implications for the nominal interest rate

wage gaps factor shares and real wages the relationships which link real wages capital intensity and factor shares are tested as a prelude to tests of the relationship between wage rigidities and labour market institutions evidence from seven countries indicates that the evolution of factor shares is well explained by changes in capital intensity which is itself well explained by product wages and technical progress a key implication is that changes in full employment capital labour ratios have been the dominant reason for the longer run decline of profit shares in europe and japan relative to the united states it follows that changes in cyclically adjusted factor shares provide little or no information regarding the gap between the actual real wage and its full employment value

demand shocks supply shocks and the cyclicality of real wages the behaviour of real wages over the business cycle has received increasiing attention in recent years the cyclicality of real wages constitues an important aspect of recent models of the business cycle however empirical studies undertaken to determine whether real wages are procyclical or countercyclical have reported conflicting findings in thiis paper we use vector autoregressions to analyse the cyclicality of real wages we find that the source of the disturbance plays a decisive role in the cyclical behaviour of real wages in particular we demonstrate that a supply shock generates procyclical real wages whereas a demand shock yields countercyclicality

macroeconomic structure and labor s share of income united states 1950 to 1980 we test several hypotheses derived fr om marxist crisis theories regarding the impact of macroeconomic performance on the distribution of income between labor and capital in the united states during the period 1950 to 1980 using annual data on compensation profits and employment we estimate the short term effects of cyclical variations in unemployment inflation growth and capacity utilization on labor s income share with an additive decomposition of labor s income share we then estimate the extent to which the observed effects can be attributed to changes in compensation output and employment we find little support for the hypothesis that tight labor markets increase labor s income share by increasing the bargaining position of labor the hypothesis that labor compensation lags behind profits over the business cycle is supported our results therefore favor the realization failure rather than the reserve army theory of cyclical crisis

cooperative responses by public and private agents to aggregate demand and supply disturbances macroeconomic literature concerned with stabilizing aggregate employment often focuses on the monetary authority s ability to react to persistent disturbances in aggregate demand this attention reflects the keynesian emphasis on demand as the primary determinant of fluctuations in real economic activity as well as the historically greater variability of demand as compared with supply disturbances in recent years however it has become increasingly apparent that supply shocks not only disrupt the economy but can lead to movements in employment output and prices that are unlike the movements of these variables in response to demand disturbances since supply side phenomena such as crop failures oil embargoes and general increases in prices of primary materials frequently accompany demand shocks it can be difficult for either public or private economic agents to develop effective methods for stabilizing employment the public authority s response to these conditions includes the consideration and introduction of new policing strategies including wage and price guidelines tax based incomes policies and supply management fiscal programmes the purpose of this analysis is a comparison of monetary policy a wage subsidy programme and a private sector indexation strategy in a setting where observed aggregate disturbances are a composite of demand and supply shocks agents obtain information about current aggregate disturbances by observing the current price level but this information does not permit unique identification of the underlying contributors a price increase for example can result from an increase in aggregate demand a decrease in aggregate supply or a combination of these factors agents rely on information contained in the price level and their knowledge of the properties of underlying demand and supply disturbances to formulate expectations of the relative importance of each shock we initially adopt the position that while all agents form rational predictions of unobservable variables private agents expect the public authority to react via a known rule to the information contained in the price level by adjusting the money supply or by implementing short term fiscal measures this cooperative posture occurs because the public authority is able to formulate contingent rules that are not readily available to private agents a role for monetary and fiscal policy develops from a relative cost advantage of public over private agents in forming these contingent contracts we focus on a comparison of a standard form of monetary policy with one supply side fiscal programme a wage subsidy given to firms since the latter programme has recently been advocated as a way of increasing employment without first requiring an increase in the price level it seems to be a suitable tool to contrast with monetary policy particularly in response to supply side shocks as an alternative to the setting of contingent rules by the public authority we briefly consider the situation where private agents choose to index the nominal wage to changes in the price level

another look at growth and defense in less developed countries lim challenges evidence showing that defense spending encouraged the economic growth of 44 less developed countries ldcs over the 1950 65 periods by reexamining the relationship between defense and growth for 54 ldcs over the 1965 73 period regional analyses cover 21 african 13 western hemisphere 11 asian and 9 middle eastern and southern european ldcs the results show that defense spending was detrimental to economic growth although adverse effects that were marked in africa and the western hemisphere were absent in asia the middle east and southern eurpoe 4 references 2 tables

the relative stickiness of wages and prices i introduction a continuing challenge to macroeconomics is to explain how a purely nominal disturbance produces short term aggregate real effects in the classical paradigm in which wages and prices are perfectly flexible a positive nominal aggregate demand disturbance will cause nominal wages and output prices to rise in the same proportion leaving real wages unchanged thus neither employment nor output will be affected consequently many business cycle theories posit the existence of wage and or price stickiness to explain how nominal aggregate demand disturbances generate real macroeconomic effects according to these theories the failure of nominal wages or prices to fully adjust in the short run to purely nominal disturbances explains why shocks to aggregate demand will cause both employment and output to temporarily deviate from their natural rates the relative importance of wage and price stickiness in the transmission of nominal shocks to the real economy however remains an unsettled issue the purpose of this paper is to exploit evidence on the behavior of real wages in an attempt to assess the relative importance of these two sources of stickiness first consider models emphasizing sticky or slowly adjusting nominal wages 1 if for example output prices are free to adjust but nominal wages are sticky a positive aggregate demand shock will cause prices to rise and real wages to temporarily fall below market clearing levels the fall in real wages will stimulate employment and thus output as the aggregate demand shock induces movement along a stable labor demand curve consequently sticky wage models predict a negative correlation between aggregate demand shocks and real wages if on the other hand wages are flexible while output prices are sticky 2 aggregate demand disturbances and real wages will tend to be positively correlated in the short run in sticky price models imperfectly competitive firms may resist adjusting output prices in response to changes in demand perhaps due to menu costs instead increases in demand are met by corresponding increases in output this requires an increase in labor inputs which in turn requires an increase in the real wage rate if wages are flexible and the labor supply curve is positively sloped thus when prices are sticky but wages are flexible a positive aggregate demand shock is associated with an increase in real wages it may be that neither prices nor wages are fully flexible if prices and wages both exhibit stickiness we would expect real wages to be positively correlated or negatively correlated with aggregate demand shocks depending in large part on whether prices or wages are stickier thus knowledge of the direction of the short run response of real wages to aggregate demand disturbances would offer important evidence on the relative stickiness of nominal wages and output prices if all business cycle fluctuations are due solely to aggregate demand disturbances such evidence could be obtained by examining the cyclical behavior of real wages since regardless of the source of stickiness aggregate demand disturbances are positively correlated with employment and output countercyclical procyclical real wages would indicate that nominal wages are stickier more flexible than output prices indeed some consider the stylized fact of slightly procyclical real wages 3 to be an important challenge to models that emphasize wage stickiness for example bennett mccallum 1986 argues for the superiority of models with sticky output prices since if wage stickiness alone were responsible for the real effects of monetary actions with product prices adjusting flexibly then we should observe countercyclical movements in the real wage that we do not has recently been reconfirmed in a study by bils 1985 gregory mankiw 1987 107 has concluded the final and perhaps most serious problem with the unadorned nominal wage story is that real wages do not move over the business cycle as the theory predicts

optimal monetary policy endogenous supply and rational expectations abstract in this paper we demonstrate that the choice of monetary policy regime will affect the variability of output when private agents in forming their supply decisions take into account the authority s selection of a policy rule a striking feature of the analysis is that the choice between policy rules in sargent wallace 1975 framework but with endogenous aggregate supply depends only on the variability of aggregate demand under each rule and not on the variability of aggregate supply it follows that the choice of monetary policy rules reduces to the problem analyzed by poole 1970 in the stochastic keynesian structure

defense spending and economic growth an alternative approach to the causality issue abstract this paper re examines the defense growth causality issue using a 21 country sample and granger causality methods developed by hsiao we find a feedback relationship existx for most countries this implies that neither growth nor defense can be considered exogenous a result suspected by joerding in earlier work but masked by his choice of an arbitrary lag structure

military expenditure spin off and economic development abstract this paper analyses the strategic causes and the economic spin off effects of military expenditure in less developed countries a formal optimising model is used to show that defence burden in ldcs may be analysed principally in terms of strategic factors such as security and threat and is determined relatively autonomous of economic factors given this autonomousness we scrutinise the widely held belief that defence expenditure has a substantial spin off in the form of technological progress r d skill creation effective demand all of which has positive developmental effects econometric evidence for india shows that such claims are exaggerated and economic spin off from defence to development is weak

a cross country comparison of the cyclicality of real wages this paper contains the first cross country comparison of the cyclical behaviour of real wages using microdata after controlling for changes in labour quality i find that real wages are strongly procyclical in canada the united kingdom and the united states in contrast the cyclicality of government published real aggregate hourly wages varies substantially across these three countries the disparity suggests that a direct comparison of the cyclical behaviour of real aggregate wages is misleading finally i show that variations in labour quality also bias the cross country correlation of several key labour market variables jel classification j3 e3 une comparaison transversale entre pays du caractere cyclique des salaires reels ce memoire presente la premiere comparaison entre pays du comportement cyclique des salaires reels a l aide de micro donnees apres normalisation pour tenir compte des changements dans la qualite du travail cette etude montre que les salaires reels sont pro cycliques au canada au royaume uni et aux etats unis au contraire le caractere cyclique des donnees sur les salaires horaires agreges varie substantiellement entre ces trois pays cette disparite suggere qu une comparaison directe du comportement cyclique des salaires reels agreges peut etre trompeuse finalement cette etude montre que les variations dans la qualite du travail biaisent aussi les correlations entre pays de plusieurs variables du marche du travail

determinants of food price inflation in finland the role of energy abstract the agricultural commodity crisis of 2006 2008 and the recent evolution of commodity markets have reignited anxieties in finland over fast rising food prices and food security little is known about the strength of the linkages between food markets and input markets such as the energy market using monthly series of price indices from 1995 to 2010 we estimate a vector error correction vec model in a cointegration framework in order to investigate the short term and long term dynamics of food price formation the results indicate that a statistically significant long run equilibrium relationship exists between the prices of food and those of the main variable inputs consumed by the food chain namely agricultural commodities labour and energy when judged by the magnitude of long run pass through rates farm prices represent the main determinant of food prices followed by wages in food retail and the price of energy the parsimonious vec model suggests that the dynamics of food price formation are dominated by a relatively quick process of adjustment to the long run equilibrium the half life of the transitional dynamics being six to eight months following a shock

in search of a stylised fact do real wages exhibit a consistent pattern of cyclical variability the paper surveys the studies on the cyclical behaviour of real wages published from the twenties onwards the traditional simple neoclassical model of the labour market suggests that real wages tend to move countercyclically however from a theoretical viewpoint there are few reasons to expect this behaviour once the simple model is extended to account for imperfect competition uncertainty lagged responses or contracting between firms and workers empirical studies give different answers to the problem the contributions reviewed in the paper are arranged roughly in a chronological order the interwar period the postwar pre econometric studies the econometric work using aggregate data the evidence produced on the basis of longitudinal data the analyses of the shock responsiveness of real wages and finally the most recent papers attempting a reconciliation of the somewhat conflicting evidence derived from aggregate and panel data

inference on productivity differentials in multi sector models of economic growth non zero marginal factor productivity differentials between sectors are a key feature of multi sector models of economic growth suggesting the potential for welfare gains through reallocation of resources between sectors however in existing studies inference on the parameter reflecting productivity differentials is inadequate reparameterization of hypotheses relating to the productivity differential parameter allows under the usual assumptions exact finite sample inference to be applied confidence intervals based on this approach applied to existing published studies suggest that many of the inferences on the potential gains in growth from exploiting inter sectoral productivity differences are fragile

time series representations of economic variables and alternative models of the labour market accepting the hypothesis that the time series facts of the aggregate labour market may be summarized by the linear autoregressive and moving average representations of wages prices unemployment and interest rates implies that a useful theory ought to lead to predictions about these representations following this approach this paper first catalogues many of the time series facts about the aggregate labour market and then compares them against alternative models of the labour market based on the intertemporal substitution and staggered contract hypotheses