Does Wage Rigidity Make Firms Riskier? Evidence from Long-Horizon Return Predictability
Abstract
We explore the relationship between sticky wages and risk. Like operating leverage, sticky wages are a source of risk for the firm. Firms, industries, or times with especially high or rigid wages are especially risky. If wages are sticky then wage growth should negatively forecast future stock returns because falling wages are associated with even bigger falls in output, and increases in operating leverage. Indeed, we find this to be the case in aggregate data, and in industry data. Furthermore, we find that industries with higher wage rigidity have a more negative relationship between wages and returns.Download Info
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Paper provided by Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics in its series Working Paper Series with number 2012-19.Length:
Date of creation: Oct 2012
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:ecl:ohidic:2012-19
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Keywords:Find related papers by JEL classification:
- E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomics: Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
- E23 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomics: Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Production
- E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
- E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
- G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2012-11-17 (All new papers)
- NEP-BEC-2012-11-17 (Business Economics)
- NEP-MAC-2012-11-17 (Macroeconomics)
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