Wage Rigidity in Historical Perspective

这是一个有趣而重要的项目，调查了用于补偿劳动力的工资制度中因经济僵化而导致的失业来源。早期的经典经济模型假设，工资和价格很容易随着经济变量的变化而调整，劳动力市场总是雇用所有愿意以现行工资工作的工人。大萧条提供了压倒性的经验证据，证明这些模型是不正确的。大多数现代就业模型或含蓄地或明确地包括自然失业率的概念。这是如果每个愿意以给定工资工作的人都能找到工作的话，这一比率就会存在。这并不是说失业率将为零。有些工作是季节性的。例如，建筑活动在春季和夏季比冬季更为普遍。在北方的气候中，一些建筑工人将在冬季的几个月里失业，至少部分时间是这样。这种结构性失业是任何发达经济体固有的，为了劳动力市场模型的概念清晰，这种结构性失业被认为构成了所谓的自然失业率。分析师和政策制定者担心的一个根本问题是，为什么实际失业率可能会高于自然失业率。经济理论提出的一个原因是，就业不能轻易适应不断变化的市场状况，特别是实际工资(即工资的购买力)不能迅速调整。最突出的工资刚性理论主要集中在劳动力和雇主之间的合同重叠、效率工资，特别是对未来工资购买力的不正确预期等因素。这项研究考察了过去一个世纪美国的工资刚性，通过这样做，它在几个方面扩展了我们对工资刚性的经验知识。首先，我们分析了比以往任何研究都要广泛得多的刚性指标。它在工资结构中纳入了跨行业的差异。该项目的另一项创新是使用1860年以来的美国行业工资数据，深入探讨劳动力市场是否发生了结构性变化，记录这些变化的来源，并分析其对宏观经济的影响。在这项工作之前，很少对不同历史时期的劳动力市场表现进行比较分析。米伦教授是一位才华横溢的年轻经验主义者，过去在分析劳动力市场方面做得很好。

This is an interesting and important project, which investigates the sources of unemployment arising from economic rigidities in the wage system used to compensate labor. Early classical models of the economy assumed that wages and prices adjusted easily to changes in economic variables, and that the labor market always employed all workers willing to work at the going wage. The Great Depression provided overwhelming empirical evidence that those models were not correct. Most modern models of employment include, either implicitly or explicitly, the concept of a natural rate of unemployment. This is the rate which would exist if everyone who is willing to work at a given wage can find employment. That is not to say unemployment will be zero. Some jobs are seasonal. For instance, construction is more prevalent in the spring and summer than in winter. In northern climates some construction workers will be unemployed, at least part of the time, during the winter months. Such structural unemployment is inherent in any advanced economy, and for the sake of conceptual clarity in labor market models, is considered to constitute the so- called natural rate of unemployment. A fundamental question of concern to analysts and policy makers is why the actual unemployment rate might be greater than the natural rate. A reason suggested by economic theory is that employment cannot adjust to changing market conditions easily, in particular real wages (that is the purchasing power of wages) do not adjust quickly. The most prominent theories of wage rigidity focus on such factors as overlapping contracts between labor and employers, efficiency wages, and, especially, incorrect expectations of the future purchasing power of wages. This research examines wage rigidity in the United States over the past century, and by doing so, it extends our empirical knowledge of wage rigidity in several ways. First, a much wider range of indicators of rigidity is analyzed than in any previous study. It incorporates cross industry variation in wage structure. Another innovation of this project is the use of U.S. industry wage data dating back to 1860 to explore in depth whether there have been structural changes in the labor market, to document the sources of those changes, and to analyze their macroeconomic impact. Little comparative analysis of labor market performance across historical periods has been done previous to this work. Professor Miron is a talented young empiricist, and has done fine work in analyzing the labor market in the past.