IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/jmoncb/v49y2017i8p1777-1802.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Passthrough of Labor Costs to Price Inflation

Author

Listed:
  • EKATERINA V. PENEVA
  • JEREMY B. RUDD

Abstract

We use a time‐varying parameter/stochastic volatility VAR framework to assess how the passthrough of labor costs to price inflation has evolved over time in U.S. data. We find little evidence that independent movements in labor costs have had a material effect on price inflation in recent years, even for compensation measures where some degree of passthrough to prices still appears to be present. Our results cast doubt on explanations of recent inflation behavior that appeal to such mechanisms as downward nominal wage rigidity or a differential contribution of long‐term and short‐term unemployed workers to wage and price pressures.

Suggested Citation

  • Ekaterina V. Peneva & Jeremy B. Rudd, 2017. "The Passthrough of Labor Costs to Price Inflation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 49(8), pages 1777-1802, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:jmoncb:v:49:y:2017:i:8:p:1777-1802
    DOI: 10.1111/jmcb.12449
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/jmcb.12449
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/jmcb.12449?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Timothy Cogley & Thomas J. Sargent, 2005. "Drift and Volatilities: Monetary Policies and Outcomes in the Post WWII U.S," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 8(2), pages 262-302, April.
    2. Todd E. Clark & Stephen J. Terry, 2010. "Time Variation in the Inflation Passthrough of Energy Prices," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(7), pages 1419-1433, October.
    3. Vasco Carvalho & Xavier Gabaix, 2013. "The Great Diversification and Its Undoing," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(5), pages 1697-1727, August.
    4. Jacquier, Eric & Polson, Nicholas G & Rossi, Peter E, 2002. "Bayesian Analysis of Stochastic Volatility Models," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(1), pages 69-87, January.
    5. Jacquier, Eric & Polson, Nicholas G & Rossi, Peter E, 1994. "Bayesian Analysis of Stochastic Volatility Models: Comments: Reply," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 12(4), pages 413-417, October.
    6. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2015. "Is the Phillips Curve Alive and Well after All? Inflation Expectations and the Missing Disinflation," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(1), pages 197-232, January.
    7. Mary C. Daly & Bart Hobijn, 2014. "Downward Nominal Wage Rigidities Bend the Phillips Curve," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 46(S2), pages 51-93, October.
    8. Koop, Gary & Potter, Simon M., 2011. "Time varying VARs with inequality restrictions," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 35(7), pages 1126-1138, July.
    9. Michael D. Bordo & Athanasios Orphanides, 2013. "The Great Inflation: The Rebirth of Modern Central Banking," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number bord08-1.
    10. G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), 2013. "Handbook of Economic Forecasting," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 2, number 2.
    11. Mark W. Watson, 2014. "Inflation Persistence, the NAIRU, and the Great Recession," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(5), pages 31-36, May.
    12. Robert J. Gordon, 2013. "The Phillips Curve is Alive and Well: Inflation and the NAIRU During the Slow Recovery," NBER Working Papers 19390, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Ekaterina V. Peneva & Jeremy B. Rudd, 2015. "The Passthrough of Labor Costs to Price Inflation," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2015-42, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    2. Janet L. Yellen, 2015. "Inflation Dynamics and Monetary Policy : A speech at the Philip Gamble Memorial Lecture, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Amherst, Massachusetts, September 24, 2015," Speech 863, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    3. Marco Del Negro & Michele Lenza & Giorgio E. Primiceri & Andrea Tambalotti, 2020. "What's Up with the Phillips Curve?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 51(1 (Spring), pages 301-373.
    4. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/293qice3lj861rvos9ns14n0h0 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. D'Agostino, Antonello & Mendicino, Caterina, 2014. "Expectation-Driven Cycles: Time-varying Effects," MPRA Paper 53607, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Delle Monache, Davide & Petrella, Ivan, 2017. "Adaptive models and heavy tails with an application to inflation forecasting," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 482-501.
    7. Chiu, Ching-Wai (Jeremy) & Mumtaz, Haroon & Pintér, Gábor, 2017. "Forecasting with VAR models: Fat tails and stochastic volatility," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 1124-1143.
    8. Meradj Morteza Pouraghdam, 2016. "Three essays on the role of frictions in the economy [Trois essais sur le rôle du désaccord en économie]," SciencePo Working papers tel-03498781, HAL.
    9. Böhl, Gregor & Lieberknecht, Philipp, 2021. "The hockey stick Phillips curve and the zero lower bound," IMFS Working Paper Series 153, Goethe University Frankfurt, Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability (IMFS).
    10. Carriero, Andrea & Mumtaz, Haroon & Theophilopoulou, Angeliki, 2015. "Macroeconomic information, structural change, and the prediction of fiscal aggregates," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 325-348.
    11. Sune Karlsson & Pär Österholm, 2020. "A note on the stability of the Swedish Phillips curve," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 59(6), pages 2573-2612, December.
    12. Cecchetti, Stephen & Feroli, Michael & Hooper, Peter & Kashyap, Anil & Schoenholtz, Kermit L., 2017. "Deflating Inflation Expectations: The Implications of Inflation’s Simple Dynamics," CEPR Discussion Papers 11925, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    13. Clark, Todd E. & Doh, Taeyoung, 2014. "Evaluating alternative models of trend inflation," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 426-448.
    14. Guglielminetti, Elisa & Pouraghdam, Meradj, 2018. "Time-varying job creation and macroeconomic shocks," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 156-179.
    15. Böhl, Gregor & Lieberknecht, Philipp, 2021. "The hockey stick Phillips curve and the effective lower bound," Discussion Papers 55/2021, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    16. Delle Monache, Davide & Petrella, Ivan, 2017. "Adaptive models and heavy tails with an application to inflation forecasting," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 482-501.
    17. Owen Grech & Noel Rapa, 2016. "STREAM: A structural macro-econometric model of the Maltese economy," CBM Working Papers WP/01/2016, Central Bank of Malta.
    18. Marco Del Negro & Giorgio E. Primiceri, 2015. "Time Varying Structural Vector Autoregressions and Monetary Policy: A Corrigendum," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 82(4), pages 1342-1345.
    19. Abdurrahman Nazif Çatık & Mehmet Karaçuka & Barış Gök, 2016. "A Time-Varying Parameter VAR Investigation of the Exchange Rate Pass-Through in Turkey," Panoeconomicus, Savez ekonomista Vojvodine, Novi Sad, Serbia, vol. 63(5), pages 563-579, December.
    20. Michael T. Kiley, 2024. "Anchored or Not: How Much Information Does 21st Century Data Contain on Inflation Dynamics?," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 20(1), pages 239-261, February.
    21. Carriero, Andrea & Clark, Todd E. & Marcellino, Massimiliano, 2019. "Large Bayesian vector autoregressions with stochastic volatility and non-conjugate priors," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 212(1), pages 137-154.

    More about this item

    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:wly:jmoncb:v:49:y:2017:i:8:p:1777-1802. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0022-2879 .

    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.