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Nominal contracting theories of unemployment: evidence from panel data

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  • Michael P. Keane

Abstract

This paper examines the response of real wages and employment probabilities to nominal shocks using micro-panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Men. Both economy-wide and sector-specific responses to nominal shocks are examined. The observed response patterns are inconsistent with nominal contract based theories of unemployment. These theories predict that nominal surprises should be negatively correlated with real wages in sectors with nominal contracting. In fact, inflation surprises are found to be essentially uncorrelated with real wages in all sectors, while money growth surprises are positively correlated with real wages in manufacturing and uncorrelated with real wages elsewhere. The positive real wage-money growth correlation in manufacturing is robust to controls for real shocks and business cycle conditions, so it does not appear to be explicable by real business cycle models with endogenous money. The type of model described by McCallum (1980, 1986), in which commodity prices are more rigid than wages, is consistent with the result.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael P. Keane, 1990. "Nominal contracting theories of unemployment: evidence from panel data," Discussion Paper / Institute for Empirical Macroeconomics 27, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedmem:27
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    Cited by:

    1. Jovanic, Boyan & Ueda, Masako, 1997. "Contracts and Money," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(4), pages 700-708, August.
    2. Dimitrios Bakas & Theodore Panagiotidis & Gianluigi Pelloni, 2024. "Labour reallocation and unemployment fluctuations: A tale of two tails," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(3), pages 3444-3468, July.
    3. Keane, Michael, 2010. "The Tax-Transfer System and Labour Supply," MPRA Paper 55167, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Peter Gottschalk, 2005. "Downward Nominal-Wage Flexibility: Real or Measurement Error?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(3), pages 556-568, August.
    5. Michael P. Keane, 2011. "Labor Supply and Taxes: A Survey," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(4), pages 961-1075, December.
    6. Guangjie Ning, 2008. "Wage forming mechanism in the market transitional process of China (1993–2005): Evidence from the provincial panel data," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 3(2), pages 312-326, June.
    7. Yaacov Lavi & Nathan Sussman, 2001. "The Determination of Real Wages in the Long Run and its Changes in the Short Run –Evidence from Israel: 1968-1998," Bank of Israel Working Papers 2001.04, Bank of Israel.
    8. Robert Grafstein, 2000. "Employment, Party Economic Performance, and the Formation of Partisan Preferences," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 12(3), pages 325-351, July.

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    Keywords

    Unemployment; Wages;

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