Wage Rigidity in Historical Perspective

历史视角下的工资刚性

• 批准号: 8707758
• 负责人: Steven Allen
• 金额: $ 8.61万
• 依托单位: National Bureau of Economic Research Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 1987
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1987-08-01 至 1991-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=8707758&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Wage; Rigidity; Historical; Perspective; Wage; Rigidity; Historical; Perspective

This is an interesting and important project, which investigates the sources of unemployment arising from economic rigidities in the wage system used to compensate labor. Early classical models of the economy assumed that wages and prices adjusted easily to changes in economic variables, and that the labor market always employed all workers willing to work at the going wage. The Great Depression provided overwhelming empirical evidence that those models were not correct. Most modern models of employment include, either implicitly or explicitly, the concept of a natural rate of unemployment. This is the rate which would exist if everyone who is willing to work at a given wage can find employment. That is not to say unemployment will be zero. Some jobs are seasonal. For instance, construction is more prevalent in the spring and summer than in winter. In northern climates some construction workers will be unemployed, at least part of the time, during the winter months. Such structural unemployment is inherent in any advanced economy, and for the sake of conceptual clarity in labor market models, is considered to constitute the so- called natural rate of unemployment. A fundamental question of concern to analysts and policy makers is why the actual unemployment rate might be greater than the natural rate. A reason suggested by economic theory is that employment cannot adjust to changing market conditions easily, in particular real wages (that is the purchasing power of wages) do not adjust quickly. The most prominent theories of wage rigidity focus on such factors as overlapping contracts between labor and employers, efficiency wages, and, especially, incorrect expectations of the future purchasing power of wages. This research examines wage rigidity in the United States over the past century, and by doing so, it extends our empirical knowledge of wage rigidity in several ways. First, a much wider range of indicators of rigidity is analyzed than in any previous study. It incorporates cross industry variation in wage structure. Another innovation of this project is the use of U.S. industry wage data dating back to 1860 to explore in depth whether there have been structural changes in the labor market, to document the sources of those changes, and to analyze their macroeconomic impact. Little comparative analysis of labor market performance across historical periods has been done previous to this work. Professor Miron is a talented young empiricist, and has done fine work in analyzing the labor market in the past.

这是一个有趣而重要的项目，它调查了用于补偿劳动力的工资系统中经济僵化引起的失业来源。 经济的早期古典模式假设工资和价格很容易根据经济变量的变化进行调整，并且劳动力市场始终雇用所有愿意在工资上工作的工人。 大萧条提供了压倒性的经验证据，表明这些模型是不正确的。 大多数现代的就业模式都隐含或明确地包括自然失业率的概念。 如果每个愿意在特定工资上工作的人都可以找到就业机会，这将是存在的利率。 这并不是说失业率为零。 有些工作是季节性的。 例如，春季和夏季的建设比冬季更为普遍。 在北部的气候下，至少在冬季，一些建筑工人将失业。 这种结构性失业是任何发达经济中固有的，为了在劳动力市场模型中概念上的清晰度，被认为构成了所谓的自然失业率。 分析师和政策制定者关注的基本问题是，为什么实际的失业率可能大于自然率。 经济理论提出的一个原因是，就业不能轻易适应不断变化的市场状况，特别是实际工资（即工资的购买力）不会迅速调整。 工资僵化的最杰出理论集中于诸如劳动力与雇主之间的重叠合同，效率工资，尤其是对未来工资购买力的期望不正确的因素。 这项研究研究了过去一个世纪美国的工资僵化，通过这样做，它以多种方式扩展了我们对工资僵化的经验知识。 首先，比以前的任何研究都对刚性的指标进行了更广泛的分析。 它结合了工资结构的跨行业变化。 该项目的另一个创新是使用可追溯到1860年的美国行业工资数据，以深入探索劳动力市场是否存在结构性变化，以记录这些变化的来源，并分析其宏观经济影响。 在这项工作之前，几乎没有历史时期的劳动力市场表现的比较分析。 Miron教授是一位才华横溢的年轻经验家，过去在分析劳动力市场方面做得很好。