Ellington, M., Martin, C. and Wang, B. (2022) Revisiting real wage rigidity. Working Paper. Sheffield Economic Research Paper Series, 2022015 (2022015). Department of Economics, University of Sheffield ISSN 1749-8368
Abstract
In this paper, we provide empirical evidence that real wage rigidity is not a major cause of unemployment volatility. We argue that there is a disconnect between the theoretical and empirical literatures on this topic. While theoretical studies define real wage rigidity as the response of wages to changes in unemployment following productivity shocks, the empirical literature measures real wage rigidity as the estimated semi-elasticity of wages with respect to unemployment, averaged over all shocks. We show that averaging over shocks gives a biased measure of real wage rigidity, as the impact of other shocks confounds the response to productivity shocks. Our results indicate that the estimated semi-elasticity with respect to productivity shocks is twice as large as the estimated semi-elasticity averaged over all shocks. This implies that one cannot attribute unemployment volatility to real wage rigidity.
Metadata
Item Type: | Monograph |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2022 The Author(s). For reuse permissions, please contact the Author(s). |
Keywords: | real wage rigidity; real wages; search frictions; time-varying parameter model |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Economics (Sheffield) > Sheffield Economics Research Papers Series The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Economics (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 03 Nov 2022 10:59 |
Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2023 23:08 |
Published Version: | https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/economics/research/ser... |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Department of Economics, University of Sheffield |
Series Name: | Sheffield Economic Research Paper Series |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:192465 |