Franklin M. Fisher, Robert M. Solow, James M. Kearl; Aggregate Production Functions: Some CES Experiments, The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 44, Issue

This paper analyzes the impact of business cycle fluctuations on a labor market segmented into a unionized primary sector and a “competitive” secondary sector. Either permanent or temporary changes in real aggregate demand are shown to widen the intersectoral wage differential in recession and, under reasonable specifications of key parameters, to cause greater fluctuations of primary-sector employment than secondary-sector employment. This pattern agrees with the stylized facts of the U. S. economy.

I. Introduction, 537.--II. Building blocks, 539.--III. The working of the model, 545.--IV. Displacement of short-run equilibrium, 554.--V. Effective demand and the distribution of income, 557.--VI. Next steps, 559.

One of the perennial problems of business cyde theory has been the search for a convincing empirical description and theoretical explanation of the behaviour of wage rates during fluctuations in output and employment. Even the empirical question is hardly settled, although the most recent careful study (Geary and Kennan) confirms the prevailing view that real-wage movements are more or less independent of the business cycle. There are really two subquestions here. The first presumes that nominal wage stickiness is the main route by which nominal disturbances have real macroeconomic effects, and asks why nominal wages should be sticky. The second focuses on real wages, and asks why fluctuations in the demand for labour should so often lead to large changes in employment and small, unsystematic, changes in the real wage.