Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: The Behavioral Determinants of Nominal Wage Rigidity

在经济衰退期间，尽管经济增长在下降，但雇主通常不会削减工资。经济学中一个长期存在的谜题是，为什么工资通常不会在经济崩溃的情况下进行全面调整。调查显示，企业抵制减薪，因为他们认为，如果减薪，工人的生产率将会降低。很难检验这些信念是否合理，因为如果没有受控实验，我们就无法观察到必要的反事实。这项研究的结果将帮助我们更好地理解就业水平如何对经济波动做出反应，并为政府用来吹嘘就业的政策提供洞察。用于抗击通缩的资金数额怎么夸大都不为过。理解名义工资基准点的影响对于经济发展非常重要。这个项目是一项实验室实验，旨在观察公司和工人在经济衰退后的决定。考虑到雇主对激励员工的信念，他们设定工资是为了最大化他们的利润。然后，员工根据他们的工资和偏好来选择努力程度。PI将能够观察工资如何影响努力选择，并准确衡量公司相信什么。在这个实验中，一些参与者将经历通货膨胀。如果一名工人的工资在通胀下保持不变，他们实际上是在接受实际的减薪，但他们可能不会像收到名义减薪后那样感到不满。研究结果将有助于我们理解通货膨胀对就业人员生产率的影响。在受控实验之外，很难在价格水平上引入随机变化。PI可以通过实验期间的绩效收益与实验后支付给受试者的美元的汇率来实现这一点。

During a recession, although economic growth is falling, employers do not usually cut wages. A long-standing puzzle in economics is why paychecks usually do not adjust to the full extent of an economic crash. Surveys indicate that firms resist wage cuts because of a belief that workers will be less productive if their wages are cut. It is difficult to test if those beliefs are justified because we cannot observe the necessary counterfactual, without a controlled experiment. The results of this research effort will help us better understand how employment levels react to economic fluctuations and provide insight into a policy that governments use to boast employment. The amount of money that goes into fighting deflation can hardly be overstated. It is important for economic progress to understand the effect of nominal wage reference points. This project is a laboratory experiment to observe the decisions of firms and workers after a recession. Employers set wages in order to maximize their profits, given their beliefs about what motivates employees. Employees then choose effort levels according to their wages and preferences. The PIs will be able to observe how wages affect effort choices and measure precisely what firms believe. In this experiment, some participants will experience inflation. If a worker's paycheck stays the same under inflation, they are actually taking a real wage cut, however they may not feel as disaffected as they would after receiving a nominal wage cut. The results will contribute to our understanding of the impact of inflation on productivity of employed. Outside of a controlled experiment, it is difficult to introduce random variation in the price level. The PIs can implement it through the exchange rate of performance earnings during the experiment to the dollar payments made to subjects after the experiment.