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，雇主通常不会削减工资。经济学中一个长期存在的谜题是，为什么工资通常不能完全适应经济崩溃的程度。调查显示，企业抵制减薪是因为他们相信，如果工人的工资被削减，他们的生产力将会下降。很难检验这些信念是否合理，因为如果没有对照实验，我们无法观察到必要的反事实。这项研究工作的结果将帮助我们更好地理解就业水平如何对经济波动作出反应，并为政府用来吹嘘就业的政策提供见解。用于抗击通货紧缩的资金数额怎么说都不为过。理解名义工资参考点的影响对经济发展是很重要的。这个项目是一个实验室实验，观察企业和工人在经济衰退后的决策。雇主设定工资是为了最大化他们的利润，考虑到他们对激励员工的信念。然后，员工根据自己的工资和喜好选择努力程度。pi将能够观察到工资如何影响努力选择，并准确衡量企业的想法。在这个实验中，一些参与者将经历通货膨胀。如果一个工人的工资在通货膨胀的情况下保持不变，他们实际上是在接受实际的工资削减，但他们可能不会像收到名义工资削减后那样感到不满。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入与实验后支付给受试者的美元的汇率来实现它。

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.