IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/4568.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Prices, Wages, and Employment in the U.S. Economy: A Traditional Model and Tests of Some Alternatives

Author

Listed:
  • Albert Ando
  • Flint Brayton

Abstract

In this paper, we outline the cost minimizing behavior of oligopoly firms and the price adjustment process in the labor market which underlie the traditional formulation of aggregate wage-price behavior in the U.S., and show that resulting equations applied to U.S. data remain stable before and after the significant change in the monetary policy rule that had taken place in 1979. This result contradicts the prediction of the Lucas critique applied to this context that, in response to a major change of the monetary policy rule, the Phillips curve and the price setting equation of firms would have undergone significant changes. We test several competing hypotheses for the price level determination, including the possibility that more direct effect of the money supply should be relevant, and show that our formulation dominates alternatives in non- nested tests. Finally, we present evidence that the nature of capital is putty-clay rather than fully malleable, together with a demand function for labor based on this recognition. In the process of these inquiries, we contrast our formulation with that proposed by Layard and Nickell in England.

Suggested Citation

  • Albert Ando & Flint Brayton, 1993. "Prices, Wages, and Employment in the U.S. Economy: A Traditional Model and Tests of Some Alternatives," NBER Working Papers 4568, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:4568
    Note: EFG
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w4568.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Davidson, Russell & MacKinnon, James G, 1981. "Several Tests for Model Specification in the Presence of Alternative Hypotheses," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(3), pages 781-793, May.
    2. Milton Friedman, 1971. "A Theoretical Framework for Monetary Analysis," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number frie71-1.
    3. Yock Y. Chong & David F. Hendry, 1986. "Econometric Evaluation of Linear Macro-Economic Models," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 53(4), pages 671-690.
    4. Hallman, Jeffrey J & Porter, Richard D & Small, David H, 1991. "Is the Price Level Tied to the M2 Monetary Aggregate in the Long Run?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(4), pages 841-858, September.
    5. R. Layard & S. Nickell, 1985. "The Causes of British Unemployment," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 111(1), pages 62-85, February.
    6. repec:sae:niesru:v:111:y::i:1:p:62-85 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. repec:bla:econom:v:53:y:1986:i:210(s):p:s121-69 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Pagan, Adrian, 1989. "On the role of simulation in the statistical evaluation of econometric models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 125-139, January.
    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. Anonymous or collective, 1998. "La boucle prix-salaires et la détermination du chômage," Économie et Prévision, Programme National Persée, vol. 134(3), pages 21-40.
    2. King, Thomas B. & Morley, James, 2007. "In search of the natural rate of unemployment," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 550-564, March.

    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. Ericsson, Neil R., 1992. "Parameter constancy, mean square forecast errors, and measuring forecast performance: An exposition, extensions, and illustration," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 465-495, August.
    2. Joseph Atta-Mensah, 1996. "A Modified P*-Model of Inflation Based on M1," Staff Working Papers 96-15, Bank of Canada.
    3. Adrian C. Darnell, 1994. "A Dictionary Of Econometrics," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 118.
    4. West, Kenneth D., 2001. "Encompassing tests when no model is encompassing," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 105(1), pages 287-308, November.
    5. Clark, Todd & McCracken, Michael, 2013. "Advances in Forecast Evaluation," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1107-1201, Elsevier.
    6. Emmanuel De Veirman, 2009. "What Makes the Output–Inflation Trade‐Off Change? The Absence of Accelerating Deflation in Japan," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 41(6), pages 1117-1140, September.
    7. Pierre L. Siklos & Andrew G. Barton, 2001. "Monetary aggregates as indicators of economic activity in Canada: empirical evidence," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 34(1), pages 1-17, February.
    8. Tie Ying Liu & Chi Wei Su & Xu Zhao Jiang & Tsangyao Chang, 2015. "Is There Excess Liquidity in China?," China & World Economy, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, vol. 23(3), pages 110-126, May.
    9. Michael T. Belongia, 1992. "Selecting an intermediate target variable for monetary policy when the goal is price stability," Working Papers 1992-008, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    10. Edward J. Bryden & Jeffrey J. Hallman, 1992. "Commodity prices and P-star," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, vol. 28(Q I), pages 11-17.
    11. Keunkwan Ryu & Kuo-yuan Liang, 1992. "Relationship of Forecast Encompassing to Composite Forecasts with Simulations and an Application," UCLA Economics Working Papers 668, UCLA Department of Economics.
    12. Ray C. Fair & Robert J. Shiller, 1987. "Econometric Modeling as Information Aggregation," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 833R, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, revised Jan 1988.
    13. Stephen Hall & David Shepherd, 2003. "Testing for Common Cycles in Money, Nominal Income and Prices," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 71(s1), pages 68-84, September.
    14. Habibullah, Muzafar, 1999. "Using P-Star Model to Linking Money and Prices in A Financial Liberalised Developing Economy: The Case for Malaysia," Jurnal Ekonomi Malaysia, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, vol. 33, pages 123-140.
    15. Andersson, Fredrik N. G., 2008. "Long Run Inflation Indicators – Why the ECB got it Right," Working Papers 2008:17, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    16. Heilemann, Ullrich, 2002. "Increasing the transparency of macroeconometric forecasts: a report from the trenches," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 85-105.
    17. Ray C. Fair & Arnold Zellner (ary), 1992. "The Cowles Commission approach, real business cycles theories, and New- Keynesian economics," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, pages 133-157.
    18. Neil R. Ericsson & Jaime R. Marquez, 1990. "Evaluating the predictive performance of trade-account models," International Finance Discussion Papers 377, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    19. Koenig, Evan F., 1996. "Interest rates and the recent weakness in M2: An extension to the P* model of inflation," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 48(5), pages 487-498, December.
    20. Venkatesh Shankar & Pablo Azar & Matthew Fuller, 2008. "—: A Multicategory Brand Equity Model and Its Application at Allstate," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 27(4), pages 567-584, 07-08.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E3 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles
    • E5 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit

    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:nbr:nberwo:4568. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.