Wage-Price Spirals: What is the Historical Evidence?

By Jorge A Alvarez, John C Bluedorn, Niels-Jakob H Hansen, Youyou Huang, Evgenia Pugacheva, Alexandre Sollaci

November 11, 2022

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Jorge A Alvarez, John C Bluedorn, Niels-Jakob H Hansen, Youyou Huang, Evgenia Pugacheva, and Alexandre Sollaci. Wage-Price Spirals: What is the Historical Evidence?, (USA: International Monetary Fund, 2022) accessed September 18, 2024

Disclaimer: IMF Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to encourage debate. The views expressed in IMF Working Papers are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board, or IMF management.

Summary

How often have wage-price spirals occurred, and what has happened in their aftermath? We investigate this by creating a database of past wage-price spirals among a wide set of advanced economies going back to the 1960s. We define a wage-price spiral as an episode where at least three out of four consecutive quarters saw accelerating consumer prices and rising nominal wages. Perhaps surprisingly, only a small minority of such episodes were followed by sustained acceleration in wages and prices. Instead, inflation and nominal wage growth tended to stabilize, leaving real wage growth broadly unchanged. A decomposition of wage dynamics using a wage Phillips curve suggests that nominal wage growth normally stabilizes at levels that are consistent with observed inflation and labor market tightness. When focusing on episodes that mimic the recent pattern of falling real wages and tightening labor markets, declining inflation and nominal wage growth increases tended to follow – thus allowing real wages to catch up. We conclude that an acceleration of nominal wages should not necessarily be seen as a sign that a wage-price spiral is taking hold.

Subject: Inflation, Labor, Labor markets, Prices, Real wages, Wage adjustments, Wages

Keywords: Inflation, Labor markets, Labor markets., Nominal wage growth, Phillips curve, Phillips Curve estimation, Real wages, Wage adjustments, Wage-price spiral, Wage-Price spiral, Wage-price spirals, Wages

Publication Details

Pages:

29
Volume:

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DOI:

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Issue:

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Series:

Working Paper No. 2022/221
Stock No:

WPIEA2022221
ISBN:

9798400224294
ISSN:

1018-5941

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