Detecting policy effects with wage rigidity and instability – evidence on the Taiwan labour market

Abstract

ABSTRACTWith stagnant wages and growing productivity, a widening gap is becoming prevalent in global labour markets. The relationship between wages and productivity has become indeterminate, especially after the 2008 financial crisis. This article presents the phenomenon for why salary rarely follows up with productivity after an economy recovers. By using the GMM method, this study shows the interaction among wage, productivity and tightness, in which we illustrate the Taiwan labour market as an example to show how hiring system changes press wages away from an efficient allocation, causing instability and market failure. Surveying 35 labour markets for different industries, we reveal that the situation in the labour markets has drastically changed since 2008. We find that this resulted in a severe problem when the Taiwan firms got used to policies like ‘22K’, ‘fix-term contract’ and ‘unpaid leave’ programmes. These plans negatively impacted the economy and raised market failure with instability.