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Are wages rigid over the business cycle?

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  • Marianna Kudlyak

Abstract

Search models of the labor market suggest that a significant determinant of job creation decisions by firms is the expected value of the initial and future real wages that firms have to pay to workers in newly formed employment relationships. Until recently, the focus of the empirical literature has been on the cyclical behavior of the current wage, but not on the cyclical behavior of the expected present discounted value of future wages within a match. This article reviews the empirical literature on the cyclicality of real wages of workers in continuing employment relationships, wages of newly hired workers, and a measure of wages that takes into account future wages within employment relationships. The existing evidence suggests that the real wage most relevant for job creation decisions appears to be quite flexible over the business cycle. Thus, the wage data do not support the rigidity necessary to generate the empirical volatility of unemployment in the standard search and matching model.

Suggested Citation

  • Marianna Kudlyak, 2010. "Are wages rigid over the business cycle?," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, vol. 96(2Q), pages 179-199.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedreq:y:2010:i:2q:p:179-199:n:v.96no.2
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Bils, Mark J, 1985. "Real Wages over the Business Cycle: Evidence from Panel Data," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(4), pages 666-689, August.
    2. Beaudry, Paul & DiNardo, John, 1991. "The Effect of Implicit Contracts on the Movement of Wages over the Business Cycle: Evidence from Micro Data," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(4), pages 665-688, August.
    3. George Baker & Michael Gibbs & Bengt Holmstrom, 1994. "The Wage Policy of a Firm," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(4), pages 921-955.
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    Cited by:

    1. António Afonso & M. Carmen Blanco-Arana, 2025. "The persistence of gender pay and employment gaps in European countries," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 67(2), pages 326-354, June.
    2. Peter Diamond, 2011. "Unemployment, Vacancies, Wages," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(4), pages 1045-1072, June.
    3. Mary C. Daly & Bart Hobijn, 2016. "The intensive and extensive margins of real wage adjustment," Working Paper Series 2016-4, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    4. Kevin x.d. Huang & Munechika Katayama & Mototsugu Shintani & Takayuki Tsuruga, 2017. "Sticky-Wage Models and Knowledge Capital: A Note," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers 17-00006, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.
    5. Stephen DeLoach & Mark Kurt, 2013. "Discouraging Workers: Estimating the Impacts of Macroeconomic Shocks on the Search Intensity of the Unemployed," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 34(4), pages 433-454, December.

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