The Review of Economics and Statistics Vol. 45 No. 2 1963
Unemployment Conditions and Movements of the Money Wage Level
Abstract
In both the United States and the United Kingdom the economics literature of recent years has been replete with discussions of the compatibility of price level stability and high employment. Interest in this broad subject has in turn stimulated renewed interest in movements of money wage levels, and particularly in the set of relationships between unemployment conditions and money wage levels. The general relevance of this type of empirical research for the "cost inflation" controversy and for the formulation of stabilization policies has been discussed at length elsewhere and so will not be considered in detail here. The main objectives of the present paper are fourfold: (1) to clarify the nature and significance of recurrent procedural problems involved in attempts to relate wage behavior to unemployment conditions, especially when only annual data are available; (2) to set forth statistical results obtained for the United States economy for the period 1900-1958 taken as a whole and for various sub-periods, with the level of unemployment and changes in the level of unemployment used as the main explanatory variables; (3) to consider in some detail the a priori basis for expecting a relationship between the rate of change of money wages and one particular explanatory variablechanges in the level of unemployment; and (4) to make some admittedly rough comparisons between the American results and the British results.
- DOI
- 10.2307/1924653
- Volume
- 45
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 163
- Sources
- openalex crossref