Rate Of Wage Inflation Research Articles

Federal government wage indexes

For nearly 50 years, the Employment Cost Index (ECI) has been providing the public with estimates of the change in employer labor costs. We explore the practicality of constructing federal wage indexes, in the spirit of the ECI, using Office of Personnel Management (OPM) salary data. To accomplish this task, we aggregate OPM records into occupation and industry groups. Although these salary data have a crosswalk for mapping OPM occupation codes into the Standard Occupational Classification system, no corresponding crosswalk exists for industries. A key hurdle, therefore, involves creating a crosswalk that assigns industry codes to OPM establishments. We create this crosswalk by developing an algorithm that uses Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages data and machine-learning tools to match agencies with a unique industry. With this agency-North American Industry Classification System crosswalk, we calculate annual Laspeyres, Paasche, and Fisher wage indexes for several aggregations. The resulting wage inflation rates are plausible and do not deviate substantially from the corresponding private industry and state and local wage inflation rates.

Factors Affecting Sectoral Employment in Nigeria during the Period of Growth (1981-2014)

The Nigerian economy was characterised with high levels of unemployment during the periods of substantial growth between 1981 and 2014. Various economists described the growth regime as “jobless”. Sectoral differences were, also, observed with regard to their job absorptive capacities. Time series secondary data covering 1981 to 2014 on the rebased Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and sectoral Gross Value Added (GVA) at 2010 constant basic prices, employment, wage rate, inflation rate and interest rate were collected from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). The variables were extracted from statutory publications of the institutions, collated and summarised into a table of data. The unit root test was carried out to test for stationarity of variables. The data was analysed using VECM at α 0.05. The result shows that wage rate, inflation rate, and interest rate all affected employment negatively across sectors. Gross Value added affected employment positively in the non-agricultural sectors, but negatively in the agricultural sectors. Inter-sectoral linkages and dependences also peculiarly affected job creation positively or negatively.

BUDGET DEFICIT CAUSES INFLATION? APPLICATION TO PORTUGAL

The analysis of Portuguese inflation, based on annual data from 1961 to 2012, using the Johansen Method, allows us to conclude that variation in Portuguese inflation is determined essentially by foreign inflation and by variation in the effective exchange rate, but the lagged variation of budget deficit seems to causes variation of inflation in the studied period. In the long run there are two long-run relationships. Both the inflation rate and the wage inflation rate relate positively with the General Government Balance in percentage of GDP, negatively with the exchange rate index, positively with the foreign inflation index and negatively with the trend. In the short run the variation of the inflation rate relates positively with foreign inflation (or its variation) and the variation in the effective exchange rate, relates negatively with the error correction mechanism, so there is a significant response to the equilibrium error between inflation rate and its determinants. In addition to this adjustment, the inflation rate responds positively and significantly to the lagged variation of the budget deficit, as expected.

Finances and returns for robotic dairies.

Automatic milking systems (AMS) became commercially available in the early 1990s. These systems provide flexibility and improve the lifestyle of farmers installing them. Because of the larger capital cost per kilogram of milk produced, observational studies in Europe and simulation studies have shown AMS to be less profitable than milking parlor systems, although previous findings are somewhat mixed. Improved performance of newer generations of AMS, better facility design to accommodate cow behavior, and better management of these facilities have the potential to make AMS more profitable. Wage rates are also increasing and sourcing high-quality milking labor is challenging. We developed partial budget simulations to model profitability of AMS compared with parlor systems for 120-, 240-, and 1,500-cow farms. Both the 120-cow and 240-cow AMS were more profitable than the parlor systems. However, the 1,500-cow parlor system was more profitable than the AMS. Breakeven labor analysis of the 1,500-cow system showed that at a wage inflation rate of 1% and a 0.91 kg/d lower milk production with the AMS system, the breakeven labor rate was $27.02/h. If the farm is able to achieve similar milk production between the 2 systems and wage inflation averages 3% over the 30-yr time horizon, the breakeven wage rate drops to $17.11/h. The major management factors that influenced the net annual impact were changes in milking labor cost and milk production. Another significant factor affecting net annual impact was the economic life of the AMS. An economic life of 13 yr or longer was required for an AMS to have a consistently positive net annual impact (depending on milk production per cow and labor cost). For every 227-kg increase in daily milk production per AMS, net annual income increased approximately $4,100. Cost-effective ways to optimize milk per AMS are to minimize attaching and milking times and to optimize milking settings.

Pre-recession wage inflation and the strength of the subsequent recovery

ABSTRACTThis study shows that the rate of wage inflation in the year before a recession is positively related to the rate of employment growth in the subsequent recovery. A possible explanation for this relationship is downward nominal wage rigidity. It is also found that the prior rate of wage inflation is not significantly related to the employment decline during the ensuing recession, suggesting that prior wage inflation has a greater impact on the strength of the recovery from a recession than on the severity of the recession.

Do Interest Rates Affect the Exchange Rate Under Capital controls? An event study of Iceland’s experience with capital controls

We study Iceland’s experience with capital controls, in particular whether changes in the central bank’s policy rate affected the exchange rate under the capital control regime from 2009 to 2015.We find that both actual changes and unexpected changes in interest rates may have affected the exchange rate when the year 2009 is included in a sample that ends in August of 2015, but not when it is excluded. This early period was characterized by lax capital controls until November of 2009. It follows that, based on the experience of the moderate changes of interest rates observed in the data, changes in interest rates may affect the exchange rate when capital controls are not effectively enforced but will have a small, if any, effect when they are enforced. It should be noted that the results are based on the experience of moderate interest rate changes during this time period. Moreover, interest rates affect other variables, such as aggregate demand and the rate of wage inflation.

Inside Money in a Kaldor-Kalecki-Steindl Fiscal Policy Model: The Unit of Account, Inflation, Leverage, and Financial Fragility

We hope to model financial fragility and money in a way that captures much of what is crucial in Hyman Minsky’s financial fragility hypothesis. This approach to modeling Minsky may be unique in the formal Minskyan literature. Namely, we adopt a model in which a psychological variable we call financial prudence (P) declines over time following a financial crash, driving a cyclical buildup of leverage in household balance sheets. High leverage or a low safe-asset ratio in turn induces high financial fragility (FF). In turn, the pathways of FF and capacity utilization (u) determine the probabilistic risk of a crash in any time interval. When they occur, these crashes entail discrete downward jumps in stock prices and financial sector assets and liabilities. To the endogenous government liabilities in Hannsgen (2014), we add common stock and bank loans and deposits. In two alternative versions of the wage-price module in the model (wage-Phillips curve and chartalist, respectively), the rate of wage inflation depends on either unemployment or the wage-setting policies of the government sector. At any given time t, goods prices also depend on endogenous markup and labor productivity variables. Goods inflation affects aggregate demand through its impact on the value of assets and debts. Bank rates depend on an endogenous markup of their own. Furthermore, in light of the limited carbon budget of humankind over a 50-year horizon, goods production in this model consumes fossil fuels and generates greenhouse gases.The government produces at a rate given by a reaction function that pulls government activity toward levels prescribed by a fiscal policy rule. Subcategories of government spending affect the pace of technical progress and prudence in lending practices. The intended ultimate purpose of the model is to examine the effects of fiscal policy reaction functions, including one with dual unemployment rate and public production targets, testing their effects on numerically computed solution pathways. Analytical results in the penultimate section show that (1) the model has no equilibrium (steady state) for reasons related to Minsky’s argument that modern capitalist economies possess a property that he called “the instability of stability,” and (2) solution pathways exist and are unique, given vectors of initial conditions and parameter values and realizations of the Poisson model of financial crises.

THE PHILLIPS CURVE IN ITALY

The estimation of the Phillips curve in Italy, using the wage inflation rate as a dependent variable, based on annual data from the period 1961-2012, using the Johansen Method, allows us to conclude two things. Firstly, in the long term, there are two long-term relationships: the wage inflation rate relates positively to the inflation rate, negatively to the unemployment rate and positively to the average labour productivity growth index, as was expected; the inflation rate relates positively to the wage inflation rate, negatively to the unemployment rate and positively to the average labour productivity growth index, as was expected. Secondly, in the short term, the variation of the wage inflation rate relates positively and significantly to the error correction mechanism of the first long-term relationship; therefore, there is a significant response to the equilibrium error between the wage inflation rate and its determinants (inflation rate, unemployment rate, labour productivity growth index). Besides this adjustment, the variation of wage inflation rate responds significantly and negatively to the variation in unemployment rate and significantly and positively to the average labour productivity growth.

Stochastic economic models for actuarial use: an example from China

AbstractIn this paper, the first study of stochastic economic modelling with Chinese data is conducted for actuarial use. Univariate models, vector autoregression and two cascade systems (equity-driving cascade system and price-inflation-driving cascade system) are described and compared. We focus on six major economic assumptions for modelling purposes, which are price inflation rate, wage inflation rate, long-term interest rate, short-term interest rate, equity total return and bond total return. Granger causality tests are used to identify the driving force of a cascade system. Robust standard errors are estimated for each model. Diagnostic checking of residuals, goodness-of-fit measures and out-of-sample validations are applied for model selection. By comparing different models for each variable, we find that the equity-driving cascade system is the best structure for actuarial use in China. The forecasts of the variables could be applied as economic inputs to stochastic projection models of insurance portfolios or pension funds for short-term asset and liability cash flow forecasting.

THE PHILLIPS CURVE IN PORTUGAL

This paper estimates the Phillips curve in Portugal using the Johansen Method, with the wage inflation rate as a dependent variable, based on annual data from the period 1954-1995. The main conclusions are as follows. Firstly, in the long term, the wage inflation rate relates positively to the inflation rate and negatively to the unemployment rate, as expected. There is also a positive relationship between the wage inflation rate and the average labour productivity growth index. Secondly, in the short term, the variation of the wage inflation rate relates negatively and significantly to the error correction mechanism with a negative unitary coefficient; therefore, there is a quick and significant response to the equilibrium error between the wage inflation rate and its determinants. Besides this adjustment, the wage inflation rate responds positively to a lagged wage inflation rate. The variation in the unemployment rate and the average labour productivity growth present the expected signal, negative and positive respectively, but without significance in the short term. The dummy that refers to the April 1974 revolution is significant.

Wage setting actors and sticky wages: Implications for the business cycle and optimal monetary policy

Two sticky-wage models are introduced in this paper to examine the implications of having either households or firms as wage setting actors. The rate of wage inflation depends positively on the output gap if households set wages whereas such a relationship is of negative sign when firms set wages. Moreover, impulse–response functions and the statistical comparison with US data show different business cycle properties depending upon wage setting actors. Finally, optimal monetary policy is derived for each case, and compared with a Taylor-type monetary policy rule.

Non-Accelerating Wage Inflation Rate of Unemployment in Poland

The model of the wage bargaining constitutes a framework for calculation of the NAWRU in Poland. The approach used in the paper let me trace changes of the natural unemployment rate in Poland in the context of structural changes in the economy in the last decade. Moreover, I introduced the endogenous equilibrium rate into the existing macroeconomic model - ECMOD. It allowed me to simulate NAWRU behavior after economic shocks. Simulation results shed some light on channels and speed of adjustment of the modelled economy. Interestingly, when NAWRU is tied to the stock of capital, relative prices and fiscal variables, the model is able to replicate high degree of the unemployment persistence.

The Role of Fiscal Policy in a Monetary Union: are National Automatic Stabilizers Effective?*

AbstractWe assess the role of national fiscal policies, as automatic stabilizers, within a monetary union. We use a two‐country New Keynesian DSGE model, incorporating non‐Ricardian consumers and a home bias in national consumption. Fiscal policy directly stabilizes non‐Ricardian agents' consumption. By doing so it contributes to the reduction in the volatility of variables such as output, wage inflation, and real interest rates. Our analysis of country‐specific shocks does not suggest potential inter‐country conflicts (as long as policies are constrained within the automatic stabilizers framework). However, we detect a potential conflict between the two consumer groups, because fiscal policy may raise optimizing agents' consumption volatility.

Phillips Curve in the Frame of Microeconomic Dynamics

The Phillips curve is a basic tool for students to understand relations between unemployment, money wage growth and inflation rates. Economic dynamics literature consists of plenty worth analyses of the Phillips curve (see Shone; 2003 or Gandolfo; 2005). In analyses is mostly automatically assumed that Phillips curve defines money wage growth rate, or inflation rate as a decreasing and convex function of unemployment rate, or output gape and as an increasing function of expected money wage growth, or expected inflation rate. Some basic models of the economic dynamics are origin dynamic models of the market equilibrium. If the subject of dynamic analyses is labour market – market commodity is labour and its price is money wage – we can derive Phillips curve. In our opinion, by this derivation could be extended books and lectures of economic dynamics. Such analyses could help student to understand why Phillips curve is for example decreasing or why it should be augmented by expectations. Similar analyses will provide our paper.

Estimating labour and output gap: evidence from the Athens Olympic Region in Greece

The present article estimates potential labour and labour gap as well as potential output and output gap using a Cobb–Douglas production function and a Hodrick–Prescott filter. We investigate the Athens Region in Greece by sector of economic activity, with the aid of the non-accelerating wage inflation rate of unemployment concept. The results support the idea that the Athens region seems to be working, mostly, over the regional economy's capabilities, a fact which leads to inflationary pressure.

GROWTH, COMMODITY PRICES, INFLATION AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF INCOME

ABSTRACTA primary commodity price boom is underway. Given the role of internationally traded primary commodities as inputs into the productive process in the industrialized world, an important question arises: namely what effects will this price‐boom exert upon wage and price inflation in industrialized countries? In order to address this question, we specify and estimate a system of equations in which the key dependent variables are world commodity prices, the domestic inflation rate for finished goods and the rate of domestic industrial wage inflation. This model is estimated against data for each of three major industrialized countries: Japan, the UK and the USA and the implications of the results thus obtained are explored.

Keynesian Disequilibrium Dynamics: Convergence, Roads to Instability and the Emergence of Complex Business Fluctuations

We reformulate the traditional AS-AD growth model of the Neoclassical Synthesis (stage I) with a Taylor policy rule replacing the conventional LM-curve, with gradually adjusting wages as well as prices, and with perfect foresight on current inflation rates and an adaptively revised notion of an inflationary climate in which the economy is operating. We compare this approach with the New Keynesian approach, the Neoclassical Synthesis, stage II, with staggered price and wage setting and find various common components, yet with radically different dynamic implications due to our treatment of the forward-looking part of our wage-price spiral. We show for a system estimate of our model that it implies qualitatively local asymptotic stability and when its estimated form is simulated in response to isolated shocks strongly damped business fluctuations, due to a stable interaction of goods market dynamics with the interest rate policy of the central bank and due to a normal working of a real-wage feedback chain. These results are however endangered – leading in fact to economic breakdown – when there is a global floor to money wage inflation rates. In this case, the return of some money wage flexibility in deep depressions is of help in restoring viability of the model, thereby even avoiding explosive dynamics and the collapse of the economy. This situation leads to viable, but complex business fluctuations.

Wage Adjustment Under Low Inflation: Evidence from U.S. History

Data from recent years indicate that employers are especially unlikely to cut the nominal wage rate paid for a job. Adjustments to real or relative wages that require absolute cuts in money wages are very rare, relative to the frequency one might expect to observe based on distributions of wage changes that do not require money wage cuts (Erica L. Groshen and Mark E. Schweitzer, 1995, 1997; David E. Lebow et al., 1999). A worker who remains with the same employer from one year to the next is accordingly unlikely to report an absolute reduction in the nominal wage he receives (David Card and Dean Hyslop, 1997; Shulamit Kahn, 1997; Joseph G. Altonji and Paul J. Devereux, 1999). The existence and causes of “downward nominal wage rigidity” have implications for macroeconomic outcomes and for practical issues in monetary policy. Presumably, efficient operation of labor markets requires many downward adjustments of relative wages, and occasional decreases in the overall wage level relative to product prices. If the average rate of wage inflation were close to zero, some of these relative or real wage adjustments would be blocked by a floor under current levels of nominal wage rates. George A. Akerlof et al. (1996) assert that downward nominal wage rigidity reflects fundamental preferences of workers, and argue that it implies a central bank should target a rate of price inflation greater than zero because “a target of zero inflation will impose permanent real costs on the economy” (p. 2). The notion that downward nominal wage rigidity is a fundamental constraint, so that inflation serves to “grease the wheels of the labor market,” is controversial even among those who accept the possibility of nominal rigidities in general. It has been argued that downward nominal wage rigidity, as distinct from such phenomena as “menu costs” [which would discourage adjustment of a wage in either direction (David Romer, 1993)], may be an artifact of an inflationary monetary regime, and would disappear in the absence of persistent inflation. “Nominal wage reductions would no longer be seen as unusual if the average nominal wage was not growing. Workers would not see them as unfair, and firms would not shy away from imposing them” (Robert J. Gordon, 1996, p. 62; see also N. Gregory Mankiw, 1996; William Poole, 1998; William B. English, 2000). To see whether downward nominal wage rigidity would exist in a noninflationary regime, it may be useful to examine data from times and places where there was no persistent wage inflation. For the United States, at least, that excludes data from years since the Second World War: throughout the postwar period, price inflation or real wage growth has been sufficient to keep average wage inflation above zero. Before the Second World War, on the other hand, long-run trend rates of price inflation were often close to zero or negative (Robert B. Barsky, 1987). If wage inflation was correspondingly low, U.S. historical data may offer tests of the proposition that downward nominal wage rigidity exists even in noninflationary

A Re-examination of Causality Relationships in Australian Wage Inflation and Minimum Award Rates - Using Multivariate Subset Autoregressive Modelling with Constraints - Financial and Economic Forecasting (chapter 11)

In this chapter, a vector subset autoregressive process is fitted using a block modified Choleski decomposition method and a leaps-and-bounds algorithm to attain the best subset autoregression for each size (number of non-zero coefficient matrices). Model selection criteria are then employed to select the optimum subset AR. (See Penm and Terrell, 1982.) In this chapter the above approach is extended to select the optimum multivariate subset autoregression with constraints, putting the final optimal model in ideal form for detecting Granger causality patterns. The vector system comprising the variables included in the 1981 analysis by Fels and Tran Van Hoa (i.e. Average Weekly Earnings, Consumer Price Index. Index of Minimum Wage Rates, demand for labor, and a strikes variable) is re-examined for the period 1953-76 by using the proposed algorithm, and direct and indirect causal relationships are established.

Downward Nominal Wage Rigidity in Japan

This paper analyzes whether or not Japanese nominal wages exhibit downward rigidity. We posit a wage adjustment model in which, below a certain wage inflation rate, wages may or may not move as much as optimal or notional wages do. By using data on wages of 18 industries and aggregate time series data, we find that nominal wages were rigid downward until 1998, but not with the inclusion of years 1999 and 2000. That is, Japanese wages responded flexibly downward to the recession of 1997–1998, but with a lag. The interpretation of such results is not straightforward. But we provide some preliminary discussions of possible factors behind such a pattern of wage movements, focusing on the relationship between wage changes and the seniority-based wage system. J. Japan. Int. Econ., March 2001, 15(1), pp. 50–67. The Bank of Japan, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 103-0021, Japan. Copyright 2001 Academic Press.Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: E24, E31, J30.