IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cca/wplabo/92.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Composition Bias and Italian Wage Rigidities over the Business Cycle

Author

Listed:
  • Isabella David

Abstract

I estimate the cyclicality of Italian real wages over the period 1985-2003 controlling for the so-called "composition bias". Aggregate real wage statistics, commonly used to measure real wage elasticity, are affected by the bias arising from the cyclical change in the skill-composition of the labor force. An analysis on WHIP longitudinal data shows that the degree of Italian real wage procyclicality significantly increases after controlling for composition bias: this result is robust to several checks and it is consistent with Solon, Barsky and Parker's 1994 seminal paper on the US. Finally, I discuss the effects of the the 90's labor market's reforms on Italian real wage cyclicality.

Suggested Citation

  • Isabella David, 2009. "Composition Bias and Italian Wage Rigidities over the Business Cycle," LABORatorio R. Revelli Working Papers Series 92, LABORatorio R. Revelli, Centre for Employment Studies.
    • Handle: RePEc:cca:wplabo:92
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.laboratoriorevelli.it/_pdf/wp92.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Francesco Devicienti, 2002. "Downward Nominal Wage Rigidity in Italy: Evidence and Consequences," LABORatorio R. Revelli Working Papers Series 20, LABORatorio R. Revelli, Centre for Employment Studies.
    2. Plosser, Charles I, 1989. "Understanding Real Business Cycles," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 3(3), pages 51-77, Summer.
    3. Bertola, Giuseppe & Rogerson, Richard, 1997. "Institutions and labor reallocation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(6), pages 1147-1171, June.
    4. Lorenz Goette & Uwe Sunde & Thomas Bauer, 2007. "Wage Rigidity: Measurement, Causes and Consequences," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(524), pages 499-507, November.
    5. Devicienti, Francesco & Maida, Agata & Pacelli, Lia, 2008. "The resurrection of the Italian wage curve," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 98(3), pages 335-341, March.
    6. Gary Solon & Robert Barsky & Jonathan A. Parker, 1994. "Measuring the Cyclicality of Real Wages: How Important is Composition Bias?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(1), pages 1-25.
    7. repec:tur:wpaper:6 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. King, Robert G. & Rebelo, Sergio T., 1999. "Resuscitating real business cycles," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 14, pages 927-1007, Elsevier.
    9. Kydland, Finn E & Prescott, Edward C, 1982. "Time to Build and Aggregate Fluctuations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1345-1370, November.
    10. Francesco Devicienti & Agata Maida & Paolo Sestito, 2007. "Downward Wage Rigidity in Italy: Micro-Based Measures and Implications," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(524), pages 530-552, November.
    11. Fei Peng & W. Stanley Siebert, 2008. "Real Wage Cyclicality in Italy," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 22(4), pages 569-591, December.
    12. Pietro Garibaldi & Lia Pacelli & Andrea Borgarello, 2004. "Employment Protection Legislation and the Size of Firms," Giornale degli Economisti, GDE (Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di Economia), Bocconi University, vol. 63(1), pages 33-68, April.
    13. Fabio Berton & Francesco Devicienti & Lia Pacelli, 2011. "Are temporary jobs a port of entry into permanent employment?," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 32(8), pages 879-899, November.
    14. Robert B. Barsky & Gary Solon, 1989. "Real Wages Over The Business Cycle," NBER Working Papers 2888, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Paul J. Devereux & Robert A. Hart, 2006. "Real Wage Cyclicality of Job Stayers, Within-Company Job Movers, and Between-Company Job Movers," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 60(1), pages 105-119, October.
    16. King, Robert G. & Plosser, Charles I. & Rebelo, Sergio T., 1988. "Production, growth and business cycles : I. The basic neoclassical model," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(2-3), pages 195-232.
    17. Stock, James H. & Watson, Mark W., 1999. "Business cycle fluctuations in us macroeconomic time series," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 1, pages 3-64, Elsevier.
    18. Fabio Berton & Francesco Devicienti & Lia Pacelli, 2009. "Are Temporary Jobs a Port of Entry into Permanent Employment? Evidence from Matched Employer-Employee Data," Working papers 06, Former Department of Economics and Public Finance "G. Prato", University of Torino.
    19. Bruno Contini & Michelangelo Filippi & Claudio Malpede, 2000. "Safari nella giungla dei salari. Nel Mezzogiorno si lavora di meno?," LABORatorio R. Revelli Working Papers Series 3, LABORatorio R. Revelli, Centre for Employment Studies.
    20. Bils, Mark J, 1985. "Real Wages over the Business Cycle: Evidence from Panel Data," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(4), pages 666-689, August.
    21. Roberto Leombruni, 2008. "Le carriere dei lavoratori dipendenti prima e dopo le riforme: un’esplorazione su WHIP," LABORatorio R. Revelli Working Papers Series 85, LABORatorio R. Revelli, Centre for Employment Studies.
    22. Lucas, Robert E, Jr & Rapping, Leonard A, 1969. "Real Wages, Employment, and Inflation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 77(5), pages 721-754, Sept./Oct.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Carlo Gianelle & Giuseppe Tattara, 2014. "Vacancy chains and the business cycle. Stringing together job-to-job transitions in micro data," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 35(8), pages 1212-1235, October.

    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. Verdugo, Gregory, 2016. "Real wage cyclicality in the Eurozone before and during the Great Recession: Evidence from micro data," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 46-69.
    2. Raven E. Saks & Abigail Wozniak, 2011. "Labor Reallocation over the Business Cycle: New Evidence from Internal Migration," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 29(4), pages 697-739.
    3. Fei Peng & W. Stanley Siebert, 2008. "Real Wage Cyclicality in Italy," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 22(4), pages 569-591, December.
    4. Sungbae An & Yongsung Chang & Sun-Bin Kim, 2009. "Can a Representative-Agent Model Represent a Heterogeneous-Agent Economy," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(2), pages 29-54, July.
    5. Khan, Aubhik & Thomas, Julia K., 2003. "Nonconvex factor adjustments in equilibrium business cycle models: do nonlinearities matter?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 331-360, March.
    6. Andrew Snell & Heiko Stuber & Jonathan Thomas, 2018. "Downward Real Wage Rigidity and Equal Treatment Wage Contracts: Theory and Evidence," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 30, pages 265-284, October.
    7. Aadland, David, 2005. "Detrending time-aggregated data," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 89(3), pages 287-293, December.
    8. Jordi Gali, 2005. "Trends in hours, balanced growth, and the role of technology in the business cycle," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 87(Jul), pages 459-486.
    9. Tania Karamisheva, 2021. "Measuring the Business Cycle in Bulgaria," Economic Studies journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 3, pages 17-38.
    10. Domenico Ferraro, 2018. "The Asymmetric Cyclical Behavior of the U.S. Labor Market," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 30, pages 145-162, October.
    11. Özer Karagedikli & Troy Matheson & Christie Smith & Shaun P. Vahey, 2010. "RBCs AND DSGEs: THE COMPUTATIONAL APPROACH TO BUSINESS CYCLE THEORY AND EVIDENCE," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(1), pages 113-136, February.
    12. Lili Kang & Fei Peng, 2017. "Wage flexibility in the Chinese labour market, 1989–2009," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(4), pages 616-628, April.
    13. King, Robert G. & Rebelo, Sergio T., 1999. "Resuscitating real business cycles," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 14, pages 927-1007, Elsevier.
    14. Chang, Yongsung, 2000. "Wages, business cycles, and comparative advantage," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 143-171, August.
    15. Otrok Christopher & Pourpourides Panayiotis M., 2019. "On the cyclicality of real wages and wage differentials," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 19(1), pages 1-18, January.
    16. Canova, Fabio, 1998. "Detrending and business cycle facts," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 475-512, May.
    17. Pacheco Jiménez, J.F., 2001. "Business cycles in small open economies: the case of Costa Rica," ISS Working Papers - General Series 19075, International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam (ISS), The Hague.
    18. Christodoulopoulou, Styliani & Kouvavas, Omiros, 2022. "Wages, compositional effects and the business cycle," Working Paper Series 2653, European Central Bank.
    19. Sébastien Bock & Idriss Fontaine, 2020. "Routine-Biased Technological Change and Hours Worked over the Business Cycle," PSE Working Papers halshs-02982145, HAL.
    20. Arango-Thomas, Luis Eduardo & Obando, Nataly & Posada, Carlos Esteban, 2012. "Los salarios reales a lo largo del ciclo económico en Colombia," Chapters, in: Arango-Thomas, Luis Eduardo & Hamann-Salcedo, Franz Alonso (ed.), El mercado de trabajo en Colombia : hechos, tendencias e instituciones, chapter 13, pages 545-585, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:cca:wplabo:92. 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: Giovanni Bert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fccaait.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.