IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/red/issued/v3y2000i1p166-193.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Gift Exchange and the Business Cycle: The Fair Wage Strikes Back

Author

Listed:
  • Fabrice Collard

    (CEPREMAP)

  • David de la Croix

    (Universite Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve)

Abstract

We extend the benchmark real business cycle model amending technology for fair wage considerations. Effort depends on current, alternative and past wages. Past wages are treated as the worker's past wages (personal norm) or as the past wages of the society (social norm). This last model reproduces the high variability of employment, the low variability of wages and the low wage-employment correlation without requiring a second source of impulsions. Wages and employment dynamics are adequately captured when norms adjust slowly to the environment. Fair wages are thus useful to solve the business cycle puzzle when we allow for inter-temporal wage comparisons. (Copyright: Elsevier)

Suggested Citation

  • Fabrice Collard & David de la Croix, 2000. "Gift Exchange and the Business Cycle: The Fair Wage Strikes Back," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 3(1), pages 166-193, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:red:issued:v:3:y:2000:i:1:p:166-193
    DOI: 10.1006/redy.1999.0075
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/redy.1999.0075
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full texts is restricted to ScienceDirect subscribers and ScienceDirect institutional members. See http://www.sciencedirect.com/ for details.

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

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wadhwani, Sushil B & Wall, Martin, 1991. "A Direct Test of the Efficiency Wage Model Using UK Micro-data," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 43(4), pages 529-548, October.
    2. Hansen, Gary D., 1985. "Indivisible labor and the business cycle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 309-327, November.
    3. Julio J. Rotemberg & Lawrence H. Summers, 1990. "Inflexible Prices and Procyclical Productivity," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 105(4), pages 851-874.
    4. Gomes, Joao & Greenwood, Jeremy & Rebelo, Sergio, 2001. "Equilibrium unemployment," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 109-152, August.
    5. Harald Uhlig, 1995. "A toolkit for analyzing nonlinear dynamic stochastic models easily," Discussion Paper / Institute for Empirical Macroeconomics 101, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    6. King, Robert G. & Plosser, Charles I. & Rebelo, Sergio T., 1988. "Production, growth and business cycles : II. New directions," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(2-3), pages 309-341.
    7. Hodrick, Robert J & Prescott, Edward C, 1997. "Postwar U.S. Business Cycles: An Empirical Investigation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 29(1), pages 1-16, February.
    8. Christiano, Lawrence J & Eichenbaum, Martin, 1992. "Current Real-Business-Cycle Theories and Aggregate Labor-Market Fluctuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(3), pages 430-450, June.
    9. George A. Akerlof, 1982. "Labor Contracts as Partial Gift Exchange," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 97(4), pages 543-569.
    10. Roger E. A. Farmer, 1999. "Macroeconomics of Self-fulfilling Prophecies, 2nd Edition," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 2, volume 1, number 0262062038.
    11. Danthine, J.P. & Donaldson, J.B., 1993. "Non-Walrassian Economies," Papers 93-02, Columbia - Graduate School of Business.
    12. Solow, Robert M., 1979. "Another possible source of wage stickiness," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 79-82.
    13. Pierre Danthine, Jean & Donaldson, John B., 1993. "Methodological and empirical issues in real business cycle theory," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 1-35, January.
    14. Clark, Andrew E., 1999. "Are wages habit-forming? evidence from micro data," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 179-200, June.
    15. Danthine, Jean-Pierre & Donaldson, John B., 1990. "Efficiency wages and the business cycle puzzle," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 34(7), pages 1275-1301, November.
    16. Lucas, Robert E, Jr, 1978. "Asset Prices in an Exchange Economy," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(6), pages 1429-1445, November.
    17. de la Croix, David, 1998. "Growth and the relativity of satisfaction," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 105-125, September.
    18. Olivier Jean Blanchard & Stanley Fischer, 1989. "Lectures on Macroeconomics," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262022834.
    19. Truman F. Bewley, 1997. "Why Not Cut Pay?," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1167, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    20. Rotemberg, Julio J & Woodford, Michael, 1992. "Oligopolistic Pricing and the Effects of Aggregate Demand on Economic Activity," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(6), pages 1153-1207, December.
    21. David G. Blanchflower & Andrew J. Oswald, 1995. "The Wage Curve," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 026202375x, March.
    22. Gomme, Paul, 1999. "Shirking, Unemployment and Aggregate Fluctuations," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 40(1), pages 3-21, February.
    23. Feve, Patrick & Langot, Francois, 1994. "The RBC Models through Statistical Inference: An Application with French Data," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 9(S), pages 11-35, Suppl. De.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    More about this item

    Keywords

    efficiency wage; effort; time-nonseparability; RBC; wage sluggishness; business cycle puzzle;

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity

    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:red:issued:v:3:y:2000:i:1:p:166-193. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Christian Zimmermann). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/sedddea.html .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.