IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jmacro/v37y2013icp93-109.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The effects of wage volatility on growth

Author

Listed:
  • Jetter, Michael
  • Nikolsko-Rzhevskyy, Alex
  • Smith, William T.

Abstract

This paper shows that the volatility of wages has significant effects on a country’s rate of economic growth. Our theoretical framework suggests two distinct channels in which wage volatility affects growth: a positive direct way and a negative indirect way. The direct effect stems from precautionary savings, whereas the indirect effect works through the mediating role of government size. In the empirical part, we use a 3SLS approach to analyze a panel of 20 high-income OECD countries and find strong evidence for the existence of both effects. These results carry general and specific implications. In general, ignoring indirect effects operating through government size may mask the real net effects of volatility on growth, which could result in misleading conclusions. Specific to wage volatility, our results suggest that the net effect on economic growth depends on both government size and the wage premium from working in the private sector. Within our sample, we find evidence for both – countries for which wage volatility is beneficial to growth and others for which it is detrimental.

Suggested Citation

  • Jetter, Michael & Nikolsko-Rzhevskyy, Alex & Smith, William T., 2013. "The effects of wage volatility on growth," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 93-109.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jmacro:v:37:y:2013:i:c:p:93-109
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jmacro.2013.05.010
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0164070413000967
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jmacro.2013.05.010?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Romer, Paul M, 1986. "Increasing Returns and Long-run Growth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(5), pages 1002-1037, October.
    2. Durlauf, Steven N. & Johnson, Paul A. & Temple, Jonathan R.W., 2005. "Growth Econometrics," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.),Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 8, pages 555-677, Elsevier.
    3. Erik Canton, 2002. "Business cycles in a two-sector model of endogenous growth," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 19(3), pages 477-492.
    4. Blanchard, Olivier Jean & Mankiw, N Gregory, 1988. "Consumption: Beyond Certainty Equivalence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(2), pages 173-177, May.
    5. Barro, Robert J, 1996. "Democracy and Growth," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 1-27, March.
    6. Wälde, Klaus, 2011. "Production technologies in stochastic continuous time models," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 616-622, April.
    7. Turnovsky, Stephen J. & Chattopadhyay, Pradip, 2003. "Volatility and growth in developing economies: some numerical results and empirical evidence," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 267-295, March.
    8. Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff, 2010. "Growth in a Time of Debt," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(2), pages 573-578, May.
    9. Shelton, Cameron A., 2007. "The size and composition of government expenditure," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(11-12), pages 2230-2260, December.
    10. David H. Romer & Jeffrey A. Frankel, 1999. "Does Trade Cause Growth?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(3), pages 379-399, June.
    11. Barro, Robert J. & Lee, Jong-Wha, 1994. "Sources of economic growth," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 1-46, June.
    12. Hall, Robert E, 1988. "Intertemporal Substitution in Consumption," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(2), pages 339-357, April.
    13. Johnson, Simon & Larson, William & Papageorgiou, Chris & Subramanian, Arvind, 2013. "Is newer better? Penn World Table Revisions and their impact on growth estimates," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 255-274.
    14. Merton, Robert C., 1971. "Optimum consumption and portfolio rules in a continuous-time model," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 373-413, December.
    15. Barro, Robert J & Sala-i-Martin, Xavier, 1997. "Technological Diffusion, Convergence, and Growth," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 2(1), pages 1-26, March.
    16. StevenN. Durlauf & Andros Kourtellos & ChihMing Tan, 2008. "Are Any Growth Theories Robust?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(527), pages 329-346, March.
    17. Turnovsky, Stephen J. & Smith, William T., 2006. "Equilibrium consumption and precautionary savings in a stochastically growing economy," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 243-278, February.
    18. Morten O. Ravn & Harald Uhlig, 2002. "On adjusting the Hodrick-Prescott filter for the frequency of observations," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(2), pages 371-375.
    19. Backus, David K & Kehoe, Patrick J, 1992. "International Evidence of the Historical Properties of Business Cycles," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(4), pages 864-888, September.
    20. Philippe Weil, 1993. "Precautionary Savings and the Permanent Income Hypothesis," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(2), pages 367-383.
    21. Daniel J. Henderson & Chris Papageorgiou & Christopher F. Parmeter, 2012. "Growth Empirics without Parameters," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 122(559), pages 125-154, March.
    22. Steve Bond & Asli Leblebicioglu & Fabio Schiantarelli, 2010. "Capital accumulation and growth: a new look at the empirical evidence," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(7), pages 1073-1099, November/.
    23. Caballero, Ricardo J, 1991. "Earnings Uncertainty and Aggregate Wealth Accumulation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(4), pages 859-871, September.
    24. Alesina, Alberto & Özler, Sule & Roubini, Nouriel & Swagel, Phillip, 1996. "Political Instability and Economic Growth," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 1(2), pages 189-211, June.
    25. Jonathan Temple, 1999. "The New Growth Evidence," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(1), pages 112-156, March.
    26. Larry E. Jones & Rodolfo Manuelli, 1990. "A Convex Model of Equilibrium Growth," NBER Working Papers 3241, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    27. Cohen-Cole, Ethan B. & Durlauf, Steven N. & Rondina, Giacomo, 2012. "Nonlinearities in growth: From evidence to policy," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 42-58.
    28. Dani Rodrik, 1998. "Why Do More Open Economies Have Bigger Governments?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(5), pages 997-1032, October.
    29. Jones, Larry E & Manuelli, Rodolfo E, 1990. "A Convex Model of Equilibrium Growth: Theory and Policy Implications," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(5), pages 1008-1038, October.
    30. Alesina, Alberto & Wacziarg, Romain, 1998. "Openness, country size and government," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(3), pages 305-321, September.
    31. Durlauf, Steven N. & Quah, Danny T., 1999. "The new empirics of economic growth," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 4, pages 235-308, Elsevier.
    32. Henderson, Daniel J. & Papageorgiou, Chris & Parmeter, Christopher F., 2013. "Who benefits from financial development? New methods, new evidence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 47-67.
    33. Caballero, Ricardo J., 1990. "Consumption puzzles and precautionary savings," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 113-136, January.
    34. William Smith, 1998. "Birth, Death, and Consumption: Overlapping Generations and the Random Walk Hypothesis," International Economic Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(4), pages 105-116.
    35. Devereux, Michael B & Smith, Gregor W, 1994. "International Risk Sharing and Economic Growth," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 35(3), pages 535-550, August.
    36. Turnovsky, Stephen J., 2000. "Fiscal policy, elastic labor supply, and endogenous growth," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 185-210, February.
    37. Ramey, Garey & Ramey, Valerie A, 1995. "Cross-Country Evidence on the Link between Volatility and Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1138-1151, December.
    38. Partha Chatterjee & Malik Shukayev, 2006. "Are Average Growth Rate and Volatility Related?," Staff Working Papers 06-24, Bank of Canada.
    39. Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), 2005. "Handbook of Economic Growth," Handbook of Economic Growth, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    40. Mark W. Watson, 2007. "How accurate are real-time estimates of output trends and gaps?," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, vol. 93(Spr), pages 143-161.
    41. Hongyi Li & Heng-fu Zou, 2002. "Inflation, Growth, and Income Distribution: A Cross-Country Study," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 3(1), pages 85-101, May.
    42. Olaf Posch & Klaus Wälde, 2011. "On the link between volatility and growth," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 16(4), pages 285-308, December.
    43. Dawson, John W. & Stephenson, E. Frank, 1997. "The link between volatility and growth: Evidence from the States," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 55(3), pages 365-369, September.
    44. Xavier Sala-I-Martin & Gernot Doppelhofer & Ronald I. Miller, 2004. "Determinants of Long-Term Growth: A Bayesian Averaging of Classical Estimates (BACE) Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(4), pages 813-835, September.
    45. Breton, Theodore R., 2012. "Penn World Table 7.0: Are the data flawed?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 117(1), pages 208-210.
    46. Amable, Bruno, 2000. "International specialisation and growth," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 11(4), pages 413-431, December.
    47. Smith, William T., 2002. "Consumption and saving with habit formation and durability," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 75(3), pages 369-375, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Abdelkader AGUIR, 2016. "Régime de ciblage d'inflation et crise financière : efficacité et performance," Post-Print hal-03825936, HAL.
    2. Anna Carolina Saba dos Reis & Eduardo Zilberman, 2013. "On the Optimal Size of Public Employment," Textos para discussão 612, Department of Economics PUC-Rio (Brazil).
    3. Michael Jetter, 2013. "Volatility and Growth: An Explanation for the Disagreement," Documentos de Trabajo de Valor Público 10944, Universidad EAFIT.
    4. Jetter, Michael, 2014. "Volatility and growth: Governments are key," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 71-88.
    5. Michael Jetter, 2017. "The Impact of Exports on Economic Growth: It's the Market Form," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(6), pages 1040-1052, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jetter, Michael, 2014. "Volatility and growth: Governments are key," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 71-88.
    2. Michael Jetter, 2013. "Volatility and Growth: An Explanation for the Disagreement," Documentos de Trabajo de Valor Público 10944, Universidad EAFIT.
    3. Capolupo, Rosa, 2009. "The New Growth Theories and Their Empirics after Twenty Years," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 3, pages 1-72.
    4. Turnovsky, Stephen J. & Smith, William T., 2006. "Equilibrium consumption and precautionary savings in a stochastically growing economy," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 243-278, February.
    5. Stefania Villa, 2005. "Determinants of growth in Italy. A time series analysis," Quaderni DSEMS 24-2005, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche, Matematiche e Statistiche, Universita' di Foggia.
    6. Haupt, Harry & Schnurbus, Joachim & Semmler, Willi, 2018. "Estimation of grouped, time-varying convergence in economic growth," Econometrics and Statistics, Elsevier, vol. 8(C), pages 141-158.
    7. Pommeret, Aude & Smith, William T., 2005. "Fertility, volatility, and growth," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 87(3), pages 347-353, June.
    8. Antonio Ciccone & Marek Jarociński, 2010. "Determinants of Economic Growth: Will Data Tell?," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(4), pages 222-246, October.
    9. Yulei Luo & William T. Smith & Heng-fu Zou, 2009. "The Spirit of Capitalism and Excess Smoothness," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 10(2), pages 281-301, November.
    10. Turnovsky, S., 2000. "Growth in an Open Economy: some Recent Developments," Papers 5, Warwick - Development Economics Research Centre.
    11. Barbara Annicchiarico & Alessandra Pelloni, 2014. "Productivity growth and volatility: how important are wage and price rigidities?," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 66(1), pages 306-324, January.
    12. Durlauf, Steven N. & Quah, Danny T., 1999. "The new empirics of economic growth," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 4, pages 235-308, Elsevier.
    13. Jesus regstdpo-Cuaresma & Neil Foster & Robert Stehrer, 2011. "Determinants of Regional Economic Growth by Quantile," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(6), pages 809-826.
    14. Clemens, Christiane & Soretz, Susanne, 1997. "Welfare Effects of Income Taxation in a Model of Stochastic Growth," Hannover Economic Papers (HEP) dp-210, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät.
    15. William Darity & Lewis S. Davis, 2005. "Growth, trade and uneven development," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 29(1), pages 141-170, January.
    16. Steven N. Durlauf & Andros Kourtellos & Chih Ming Tan, 2008. "Empirics of Growth and Development," Chapters, in: Amitava Krishna Dutt & Jaime Ros (ed.), International Handbook of Development Economics, Volumes 1 & 2, volume 0, chapter 3, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    17. Michael S. Delgado & Daniel J. Henderson & Christopher F. Parmeter, 2014. "Does Education Matter for Economic Growth?," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 76(3), pages 334-359, June.
    18. Feng, Guohua & Gao, Jiti & Peng, Bin, 2022. "An integrated panel data approach to modelling economic growth," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 228(2), pages 379-397.
    19. Celal Kucuker, 2003. "Türkiye Ýktisat Kongresi Büyüme Stratejileri Çalýþma Grubu," Working Papers 2003/5, Turkish Economic Association.
    20. Barbara Annicchiarico & Luisa Corrado & Alessandra Pelloni, 2011. "Long‐Term Growth And Short‐Term Volatility: The Labour Market Nexus," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 79(s1), pages 646-672, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Economic growth; Volatility; Government size; Wages; 3SLS;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C33 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models
    • E20 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • O40 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jmacro:v:37:y:2013:i:c:p:93-109. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622617 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.