The long run Phillips curve and the role of downward nominal wage rigidity in Tunisia

The long run Phillips curve has been a controversial topic for many economists such as Friedman (1968) and Lucas (1972) among others since the 70's. Many new studies concerning the impact of downward nominal wage resistance hypothesis on the long run Phillips curve have enriched the empirical literature. However, the essential idea of this study is to examine the evidence of this hypothesis and its impact on the long run Phillips curve in Tunisia. Relying on annual data covering the period 1962-2004, we estimate two models of the Phillips curve: one is standard and the other with downward nominal wage rigidity in which we are inspired by the works of Akerlof, Dickens and Perry (1996). We adopt two estimation methods: the Ordinary Least Square and the Non Linear Least Square. Our results suggest a possibility of a long run unemployment inflation trade off incorporating the downward nominal wage rigidity hypothesis.