IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecanpo/v76y2022icp1098-1107.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Medium-run determinants of real wages in Australia

Author

Listed:
  • Fisher, Lance A.
  • Kingston, Geoffrey

Abstract

We assess the medium-run effects of changes in the labour force, the capital stock and the terms of trade on real wages in Australia between 1978 and 2018. For this purpose, we estimate a simple two-sector specific-factors model. A rise of one percent in the labour force lowers wages by 1.4 percent, a rise of one percent in the capital stock lifts wages by 0.47 percent and a rise of one percent in the terms of trade lifts wages by 0.15 percent. Rapid growth in the labour force accounts for some of the stagnation of wages between 1984 and 1989, and slow growth in the capital stock accompanied the stagnation between 2013 and 2018. Declines in the terms of trade preceded both episodes.

Suggested Citation

  • Fisher, Lance A. & Kingston, Geoffrey, 2022. "Medium-run determinants of real wages in Australia," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 1098-1107.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecanpo:v:76:y:2022:i:c:p:1098-1107
    DOI: 10.1016/j.eap.2022.09.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0313592622001448
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.eap.2022.09.002?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
    ---><---

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

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bill Russell & Warren Tease, 1991. "Employment, Output and Real Wages," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 67(1), pages 34-45, March.
    2. repec:bla:ecorec:v:55:y:1979:i:148:p:1-19 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Rainer Klump & Peter McAdam & Alpo Willman, 2012. "The Normalized Ces Production Function: Theory And Empirics," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(5), pages 769-799, December.
    4. Johansen, Soren, 1988. "Statistical analysis of cointegration vectors," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 12(2-3), pages 231-254.
    5. MacKinnon, James G & Haug, Alfred A & Michelis, Leo, 1999. "Numerical Distribution Functions of Likelihood Ratio Tests for Cointegration," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(5), pages 563-577, Sept.-Oct.
    6. W. M. Corden, 1979. "Wages and Unemployment in Australia," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 55(1), pages 1-19, March.
    7. James Bishop & Iris Chan, 2019. "Is Declining Union Membership Contributing to Low Wages Growth?," RBA Annual Conference Papers acp2019-06, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    8. Alexander Ballantyne & Tom Cusbert & Richard Evans & Rochelle Guttmann & Jonathan Hambur & Adam Hamilton & Elizabeth Kendall & Rachael McCririck & Gabriela Nodari & Daniel M. Rees, 2020. "MARTIN Has Its Place: A Macroeconometric Model of the Australian Economy," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 96(314), pages 225-251, September.
    9. Jones, Ronald W., 1996. "International trade, real wages, and technical progress: The specific-factors model," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 113-124.
    10. repec:bla:ecorec:v:67:y:1991:i:196:p:34-45 is not listed on IDEAS
    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. Fakhri J. Hasanov & Muhammad Javid & Frederick L. Joutz, 2022. "Saudi Non-Oil Exports before and after COVID-19: Historical Impacts of Determinants and Scenario Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(4), pages 1-38, February.
    2. Juan Carlos Cuestas & Karsten Staehr, 2014. "The great (De)leveraging in the GIIPS countries. Domestic credit and net foreign liabilities 1998–2013," Bank of Estonia Working Papers wp2014-4, Bank of Estonia, revised 10 Oct 2014.
    3. Mohcine Bakhat & Klaas WŸrzburg, 2013. "Co-integration of Oil and Commodity Prices: A Comprehensive ApproachAbstract," Working Papers fa05-2013, Economics for Energy.
    4. Mauricio, Jose Alberto, 2006. "Exact maximum likelihood estimation of partially nonstationary vector ARMA models," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 50(12), pages 3644-3662, August.
    5. Erie Febrian & Aldrin Herwany, 2009. "Volatility Forecasting Models and Market Co-Integration: A Study on South-East Asian Markets," Working Papers in Economics and Development Studies (WoPEDS) 200911, Department of Economics, Padjadjaran University, revised Sep 2009.
    6. Ansgar Belke & Robert Czudaj, 2010. "Is Euro Area Money Demand (Still) Stable? Cointegrated VAR Versus Single Equation Techniques," Applied Economics Quarterly (formerly: Konjunkturpolitik), Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, vol. 56(4), pages 285-315.
    7. Frank Iyekoretin Ogbeide & Hilary Kanwanye & Sunday Kadiri, 2016. "Revisiting the Determinants of Unemployment in Nigeria: Do Resource Dependence and Financial Development Matter?," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 28(4), pages 430-443, December.
    8. Derek Bond & Michael J. Harrison & Edward J. O'Brien, 2005. "Testing for Long Memory and Nonlinear Time Series: A Demand for Money Study," Trinity Economics Papers tep20021, Trinity College Dublin, Department of Economics.
    9. Martin T. Bohl & Alexander Pütz & Pierre L. Siklos & Christoph Sulewski, 2018. "Information Transmission under Increasing Political Tension – Evidence for the Berlin Produce Exchange 1887-1896," CQE Working Papers 7618, Center for Quantitative Economics (CQE), University of Muenster.
    10. Dimpfl, Thomas, 2014. "A note on cointegration of international stock market indices," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 10-16.
    11. Bernstein, Ronald & Madlener, Reinhard, 2015. "Short- and long-run electricity demand elasticities at the subsectoral level: A cointegration analysis for German manufacturing industries," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 178-187.
    12. Gabriella Deborah Legrenzi & Costas Milas, 2010. "Spend-and-Tax Adjustments and the Sustainability of the Government's Intertemporal Budget Constraint," CESifo Working Paper Series 2926, CESifo.
    13. Srinivasan Palamalai & Kalaivani M. & Christopher Devakumar, 2013. "Stock Market Linkages in Emerging Asia-Pacific Markets," SAGE Open, , vol. 3(4), pages 21582440135, November.
    14. Akinfenwa, Samson O. & Qasmi, Bashir A., 2014. "Ethanol, the Agricultural Economy, and Rural Incomes in the United States: A Bivariate Econometric Approach," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association, vol. 43(2), pages 1-15, August.
    15. Carstensen, Kai, 2003. "Nonstationary term premia and cointegration of the term structure," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 80(3), pages 409-413, September.
    16. B. Faye & E. Le Fur & S. Prat, 2015. "Dynamics of fine wine and asset prices: evidence from short- and long-run co-movements," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(29), pages 3059-3077, June.
    17. Jeremy B. Rudd & Karl Whelan, 2002. "A note on the cointegration of consumption, income, and wealth," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2002-53, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    18. Erdal Demirhan & Banu Demirhan, 2015. "The Dynamic Effect of ExchangeRate Volatility on Turkish Exports: Parsimonious Error-Correction Model Approach," Panoeconomicus, Savez ekonomista Vojvodine, Novi Sad, Serbia, vol. 62(4), pages 429-451, September.
    19. Ali Trabelsi Karoui & Aida Kammoun, 2021. "Exchange Rate Determination: Mixed Microstructural and Macroeconomic Approach," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 11(3), pages 89-106.
    20. Diamandis, Panayiotis F., 2009. "International stock market linkages: Evidence from Latin America," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 13-30.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Consumer wages; Stagnant wages; Value marginal product; Specific-factors model; Capital-intensive exports;
    All these keywords.

    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
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials

    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:eee:ecanpo:v:76:y:2022:i:c:p:1098-1107. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/economic-analysis-and-policy .

    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.