IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rba/rbaacp/acp2023-04.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Wage-Price Spirals: What is the Historical Evidence?

Author

Listed:
  • Jorge Alvarez
  • John Bluedorn
  • Niels-Jakob Hansen
  • Youyou Huang
  • Evgenia Pugacheva
  • Alexandre Sollaci

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Jorge Alvarez & John Bluedorn & Niels-Jakob Hansen & Youyou Huang & Evgenia Pugacheva & Alexandre Sollaci, 2023. "Wage-Price Spirals: What is the Historical Evidence?," RBA Annual Conference Papers acp2023-04, Reserve Bank of Australia, revised Nov 2023.
    • Handle: RePEc:rba:rbaacp:acp2023-04
    Note: Paper presented at the RBA's annual conference 'Inflation', Sydney, 25–26 September 2023.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/confs/2023/pdf/rba-conference-2023-alvarez-bluedorn-hansen-huang-pugacheva-sollaci.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Olivier J. Blanchard, 1986. "The Wage Price Spiral," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 101(3), pages 543-565.
    2. Jordi Galí, 2011. "The Return Of The Wage Phillips Curve," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 436-461, June.
    3. Buono, Ines & Formai, Sara, 2018. "New evidence on the evolution of the anchoring of inflation expectations," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 39-54.
    4. Ball, Laurence, 1994. "Credible Disinflation with Staggered Price-Setting," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(1), pages 282-289, March.
    5. Felipe Schwartzman & Sonya Ravindranath Waddell, 2022. "Are Firms Factoring Increasing Inflation Into Their Prices?," Richmond Fed Economic Brief, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, vol. 22(08), March.
    6. Helpman, Elhanan & Leiderman, Leonardo, 1990. "Real wages, monetary accommodation, and inflation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 897-911, July.
    7. A. W. Phillips, 1958. "The Relation Between Unemployment and the Rate of Change of Money Wage Rates in the United Kingdom, 1861–1957," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 25(100), pages 283-299, November.
    8. Alex Domash & Lawrence H. Summers, 2022. "How Tight are U.S. Labor Markets?," NBER Working Papers 29739, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Sebastian Heise & Fatih Karahan & Ayşegül Şahin, 2022. "The Missing Inflation Puzzle: The Role of the Wage‐Price Pass‐Through," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 54(S1), pages 7-51, February.
    10. Koester, Gerrit & Grapow, Helen, 2021. "The prevalence of private sector wage indexation in the euro area and its potential role for the impact of inflation on wages," Economic Bulletin Boxes, European Central Bank, vol. 7.
    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. Lesch, Hagen, 2024. "Koordinierung von Geld- und Lohnpolitik: Was wir aus den Erfahrungen der 1970er Jahre lernen können," IW-Trends – Vierteljahresschrift zur empirischen Wirtschaftsforschung, Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft (IW) / German Economic Institute, vol. 51(1), pages 59-66.
    2. Kilian, Lutz & Zhou, Xiaoqing, 2023. "Oil Price Shocks and Inflation," CEPR Discussion Papers 18416, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Lucotte, Yannick & Pradines-Jobet, Florian, 2023. "The inflation loop is not a myth," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 55(PB).
    4. Ferri, Piero & Cristini, Annalisa & Tramontana, Fabio, 2023. "Meta-models of the Phillips curve and income distribution," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 213(C), pages 215-232.
    5. Lucio Gobbi & Ronny Mazzocchi & Roberto Tamborini, 2024. "When Should Central Banks Fear Inflation Expectations?," CESifo Working Paper Series 10966, CESifo.
    6. Leef H. Dierks, 2023. "Inflation, Monetary Policy and the Sacrifice Ratio:The Case of Southeast Asia," Working Papers wp50, South East Asian Central Banks (SEACEN) Research and Training Centre.
    7. Michal Franta & Jan Vlcek, 2024. "Wage-Price Spirals: A Risk-Based Approach," Working Papers 2024/1, Czech National Bank.
    8. Max Sina Knicker & Karl Naumann-Woleske & Jean-Philippe Bouchaud & Francesco Zamponi, 2023. "Post-COVID Inflation & the Monetary Policy Dilemma: An Agent-Based Scenario Analysis," Papers 2306.01284, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2024.
    9. Sánchez García, Javier & Galdeano Gómez, Emilio & Cruz Rambaud, Salvador, 2024. "Drivers of inflationary shocks and spillovers between Europe and the United States," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    10. Di Nino, Virginia & Aprigliano, Valentina, 2024. "How income expectations adjust to inflation – a consumers’ expectations-revealed pass-through," Working Paper Series 2986, European Central Bank.
    11. Roberto Lampa & Gianmarco Oro, 2023. "Can the side effects of sanctions and energy inflation trigger the disintegration of the international monetary regime?," PSL Quarterly Review, Economia civile, vol. 76(306), pages 225-242.

    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. Shira Buzaglo-Baris, 2024. "Wage and Price Inflation: An Industry-Level Study," Bank of Israel Working Papers 2024.09, Bank of Israel.
    2. Maximilian Gödl & Isabel Gödl-Hanisch, 2024. "Wage Setting in Times of High and Low Inflation," CESifo Working Paper Series 11319, CESifo.
    3. Musy, Olivier & Pereau, Jean-Christophe, 2010. "Disinflationary boom in a price-wage spiral model," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 152-158, January.
    4. Karanassou, Marika & Sala, Hector & Snower, Dennis J., 2005. "A reappraisal of the inflation-unemployment tradeoff," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 1-32, March.
    5. Jeremy Rudd & Karl Whelan, 2007. "Modeling Inflation Dynamics: A Critical Review of Recent Research," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(s1), pages 155-170, February.
    6. Wang, Pengfei & Wen, Yi, 2007. "Inflation dynamics: A cross-country investigation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(7), pages 2004-2031, October.
    7. Bozani, Vasiliki & Drydakis, Nick, 2011. "Studying the NAIRU and its Implications," IZA Discussion Papers 6079, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Javier Gómez & José Darío Uribe & Hernando Vargas, 2002. "The Implementation Of Inflation Targeting In Colombia," Borradores de Economia 3603, Banco de la Republica.
    9. Muto Ichiro & Shintani Kohei, 2020. "An empirical study on the New Keynesian wage Phillips curve: Japan and the US," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 20(1), pages 1-17, January.
    10. Fabian Eser & Peter Karadi & Philip R. Lane & Laura Moretti & Chiara Osbat, 2020. "The Phillips Curve at the ECB," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 88(S1), pages 50-85, September.
    11. Sitikantha Pattanaik & Silu Muduli & Soumyajit Ray, 2020. "Inflation expectations of households: do they influence wage-price dynamics in India?," Macroeconomics and Finance in Emerging Market Economies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(3), pages 244-263, September.
    12. Karanassou, Marika & Sala, Hector & Snower, Dennis J., 2008. "Long-run inflation-unemployment dynamics: The Spanish Phillips curve and economic policy," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 279-300.
    13. Groiss, Martin & Sondermann, David, 2023. "Help wanted: the drivers and implications of labour shortages," Working Paper Series 2863, European Central Bank.
    14. Jordà, Òscar & Nechio, Fernanda, 2023. "Inflation and wage growth since the pandemic," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).
    15. Voinea, Liviu, 2019. "The Post-Crisis Phillips Curve: A New Empirical Relationship between Wage and Inflation," GLO Discussion Paper Series 303, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    16. Czudaj, Robert L., 2025. "Expectation formation and the Phillips curve revisited," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 29, pages 1-1, January.
    17. K. Huang & Z. Liu & L. Phaneuf, "undated". "Staggered contracts, intermediate goods and the dynamic effects of monetary shocks on output, inflation and real wages," Working Papers 2000-20, Utah State University, Department of Economics.
    18. Stanley Fischer, 1995. "Modern Approaches to Central Banking," NBER Working Papers 5064, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Kose,Ayhan & Matsuoka,Hideaki & Panizza,Ugo G. & Vorisek,Dana Lauren, 2019. "Inflation Expectations : Review and Evidence," Policy Research Working Paper Series 8785, The World Bank.
    20. George A. Akerlof, 2003. "Behavioral Macroeconomics and Macroeconomic Behavior," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 47(1), pages 25-47, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    inflation; wages; wage-price spirals; labor markets;
    All these keywords.

    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:rba:rbaacp:acp2023-04. 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: Paula Drew (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rbagvau.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.