Türkiye’de Enflasyon ile Asgari Ücretler Arasındaki İlişki ve Ücret-Fiyat Sarmalı

Abstract

Working for wage has started to accelerate with the industrial revolution and reached its highest rates with the neo-liberal period. The wage earners now constitute the majority of the society in employment in many countries. Therefore, any policy regarding wage earners concerns the general public. In this study, it was aimed to examine the direction of the relationship between wages & inflation and to determine the point of real wages. For this purpose, annual CPI and Minimum Wage data between 1987-2018 were used. The relationship between inflation and minimum wage was determined by applying ARDL Boundary Test Approach and the existence of wage-price spiral by applying Toda-Yamamoto Causality tests. According to the results of the econometric analysis, a long-term relationship was found between inflation and minimum wage, while the relationship was found meaningless in the short term. Accordingly, a 1% increase in inflation in the long run increases the minimum wage by approximately 2.59%. The fact that the increase in the minimum wage is higher than the increase in the inflation rate that’s so the elasticity coefficient greater than 1 means the real increase in the minimum wage. According to the results of Toda-Yamamoto Causality analysis, a bidirectional causality relationship was determined both from minimum wages to inflation and from inflation to minimum wages. This relationship suggests the existence of the 1987-2018 reference period in the range of wage-price spiral in Turkey. It was observed that the minimum wage increased by 3.65 units in the years following the crisis periods.