IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mpc/wpaper/02.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Inflation Dynamics and the Labour Share in the UK

Author

Listed:
  • Nicoletta Batini
  • Brian Jackson
  • Stephen Nickell

Abstract

In recent years UK real wages have been growing faster than labour factor productivity, implying that the labour share has been rising. This paper looks at various definitions of the labour share and derives a measure for the UK, which appears positively correlated with the growth rate of the UK gross value added price deflator. Following Layard, Nickell and Jackman (1991), we investigate the relationship between inflation and the share more formally by estimating a pricing equation or “new Phillips curve” obtained from a structural dynamic model of price setting based on Rotemberg (1982) and extended to capture employment adjustment costs and the openness of the UK economy. This model nests the Sbordone (1998) and Gali, Gertler and Lopez-Salido (2000) relationship between inflation and marginal costs in the limiting case of a constant equilibrium mark-up and no employment adjustment costs. Our findings suggest that there is a stable ceteris paribus relationship between inflation and the labour share over the last 30 years in the UK and so the share contains information that helps to predict inflation.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicoletta Batini & Brian Jackson & Stephen Nickell, 2000. "Inflation Dynamics and the Labour Share in the UK," Discussion Papers 02, Monetary Policy Committee Unit, Bank of England.
  • Handle: RePEc:mpc:wpaper:02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/externalmpcpapers/extmpcpaper0002.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael Dotsey & Robert G. King & Alexander L. Wolman, 1999. "State-Dependent Pricing and the General Equilibrium Dynamics of Money and Output," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 114(2), pages 655-690.
    2. Bentolila Samuel & Saint-Paul Gilles, 2003. "Explaining Movements in the Labor Share," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 3(1), pages 1-33, October.
    3. Caballero, Ricardo J. & Hammour, Mohamad L., 1998. "Jobless growth: appropriability, factor substitution, and unemployment," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 51-94, June.
    4. Gali, Jordi & Gertler, Mark & Lopez-Salido, J. David, 2001. "European inflation dynamics," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 45(7), pages 1237-1270.
    5. Green, Edward J & Porter, Robert H, 1984. "Noncooperative Collusion under Imperfect Price Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(1), pages 87-100, January.
    6. Praschnik, J. & Costello, D.M., 1992. "Are Labor Shares Really Constant? An International Study of the Cyclical Behavior of Labor Shares," University of Western Ontario, Departmental Research Report Series 9207, University of Western Ontario, Department of Economics.
    7. Layard, Richard & Nickell, Stephen & Jackman, Richard, 2005. "Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199279173.
    8. Jacques R. Artus, 1984. "An Empirical Evaluation of the Disequilibrium Real Wage Rate Hypothesis," NBER Working Papers 1404, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Roberts, John M, 1995. "New Keynesian Economics and the Phillips Curve," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 27(4), pages 975-984, November.
    10. Kang, Joo-Hoon & Jeong, Ugyeong & Bae, Joo-Han, 1998. "Cyclicality of markups and real wages in Korea," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 60(3), pages 343-349, September.
    11. Oliver J. Blanchard, 1997. "The Medium Run," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 28(2), pages 89-158.
    12. Blanchard, Olivier, 1998. "Revisiting European Unemployment : Unemployment, Capital Accumulation and Factor Prices," Research Series, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number GLS28, August.
    13. Henley, Andrew, 1987. "Labour's Shares and Profitability Crisis in the U.S.: Recent Experience and Post-war Trends," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 11(4), pages 315-330, December.
    14. Rotemberg, Julio J, 1982. "Sticky Prices in the United States," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(6), pages 1187-1211, December.
    15. Calvo, Guillermo A., 1983. "Staggered prices in a utility-maximizing framework," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 383-398, September.
    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. Bentolila Samuel & Saint-Paul Gilles, 2003. "Explaining Movements in the Labor Share," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 3(1), pages 1-33, October.
    2. Sophocles Mavroeidis & Mikkel Plagborg-Møller & James H. Stock, 2014. "Empirical Evidence on Inflation Expectations in the New Keynesian Phillips Curve," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 52(1), pages 124-188, March.
    3. Amato, Jeffery D. & Laubach, Thomas, 2003. "Rule-of-thumb behaviour and monetary policy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(5), pages 791-831, October.
    4. Thorvardur Tjörvi Ólafsson, 2006. "The New Keynesian Phillips Curve: In Search of Improvements and Adaptation to the Open Economy," Economics wp31_tjorvi, Department of Economics, Central bank of Iceland.
    5. Christopher Tsoukis & George Kapetanios & Joseph Pearlman, 2011. "Elusive Persistence: Wage And Price Rigidities, The New Keynesian Phillips Curve And Inflation Dynamics," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(4), pages 737-768, September.
    6. M. Magnani, 2009. "Labor share dynamics: a survey of the theory," Economics Department Working Papers 2009-EP07, Department of Economics, Parma University (Italy).
    7. repec:pra:mprapa:43050 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Mash, Richard, 2002. "New Keynesian Microfoundations Revisited: A Generalised Calvo-Taylor Model and the Desirability of Inflation vs. Price Level Targeting," Royal Economic Society Annual Conference 2002 138, Royal Economic Society.
    9. Boug, Pål & Cappelen, Adne & Swensen, Anders Rygh, 2010. "The new Keynesian Phillips curve revisited," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 858-874, May.
    10. Andrei Polbin & Sergey Drobyshevsky, 2014. "Developing a Dynamic Stochastic Model of General Equilibrium for the Russian Economy," Research Paper Series, Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy, issue 166P, pages 156-156.
    11. Roberto Torrini, 2015. "Labour, Profit and Housing Rent Shares in Italian GDP: Long-Run Trends and Recent Patterns," Politica economica, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 3, pages 275-314.
    12. Lawless, Martina & Whelan, Karl T., 2011. "Understanding the dynamics of labor shares and inflation," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 121-136, June.
    13. Marika Karanassou & Hector Sala & Dennis J. Snower, 2010. "Phillips Curves And Unemployment Dynamics: A Critique And A Holistic Perspective," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(1), pages 1-51, February.
    14. Bardsen, Gunnar & Eitrheim, Oyvind & Jansen, Eilev S. & Nymoen, Ragnar, 2005. "The Econometrics of Macroeconomic Modelling," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199246502.
    15. Sbordone, Argia M., 2002. "Prices and unit labor costs: a new test of price stickiness," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 265-292, March.
    16. Levin, Andrew T. & David López-Salido, J. & Nelson, Edward & Yun, Tack, 2008. "Macroeconometric equivalence, microeconomic dissonance, and the design of monetary policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(Supplemen), pages 48-62, October.
    17. Chris Tsoukis & George Kapetanios & Joseph Pearlman, 2007. "The Elusive Persistence: Wage and Price Rigidities, the Phillips Curve, and Inflation Dynamics," Working Papers 619, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    18. Kessing, Sebastian G., 2003. "A note on the determinants of labour share movements," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 9-12, October.
    19. Richard Mash, 2003. "New Keynesian Microfoundations Revisited: A Calvo-Taylor-Rule-of-Thumb Model and Optimal Monetary Policy Delegation," Economics Series Working Papers 174, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    20. Eilev S. Jansen, 2004. "Modelling inflation in the Euro Area," Working Paper 2004/10, Norges Bank.
    21. Chengsi Zhang & Denise R. Osborn & Dong Heon Kim, 2009. "Observed Inflation Forecasts and the New Keynesian Phillips Curve," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 71(3), pages 375-398, June.

    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:mpc:wpaper:02. 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: Bank of England Website (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/mpcgvuk.html .

    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.