The increase in the real wages of British workers over the last one hundred years is often attributed to the growth in labour productivity, but this has rarely been confirmed. In the research reported here, this ascription is confronted with annual observations on wages and productivity spanning...

We challenge the view that Centrally Planned Economies functioned well until the early 1970s, delivering high economic growth and better living standards. Judged by real wages as the most widely used historical living standard indicator, only in the 1970s did Bulgarian living standards surpass...

Why have the real (consumption) wages of U.S. workers risen since the nineteenth century? Some economists answer that increases in real wages have followed increases in labor productivity over time. In this paper, this hypothesized association is confronted with annual observations of changes in...

In their 1993 book, Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway contend that US unemployment during the twentieth century can be largely explained by movements in the "adjusted real wage rate", that is, the real hourly wage rate divided by labor productivity. In particular, the authors suggest that...

Do labour institutions influence how wages respond to the business cycle? Such responsiveness can then shape several economic outcomes, including unemployment. In this paper, we examine the role of two key labour market institutions - collective bargaining and temporary contracts - upon wage...

The world has experienced rapid productivity growth in the last three decades, but has this growth reflected in wages? In theory, under certain conditions, workers earn their marginal product so that productivity growth feeds into wages on a one-to-one basis. Given the contradictory literature,...

Unlike past high-inflation episodes, the euro area labour market remained surprisingly resilient during the inflation surge of the early 2020s. This paper investigates the drivers of this resilience by combining long-span euro area macroeconomic data (1970-2025) with a structural VAR analysis...

This article leverages uniquely abundant town-level data to examine spatial inequality in prices and wages during the First Globalisation. I build a new dataset on prices of traded and household goods, and wages of skilled and unskilled workers for a panel of 42 towns in Serbia, in the period...

Using annual observations on U.S. non-farm workers from the late 1940s to 2019, descriptions of the movements of nominal wages, real consumption wages, and real product wages are reported. The prices faced by consumer workers and the prices faced by owner-managers move differently. Variables...

Dutch inflation has risen steeply recently, despite unprecedented cuts in energy taxes and VAT, to a record high of 17% in September 2022. Energy has been by far the major driver of the inflation surge, but inflation has been broadening in 2022, with food price rises above 10% since July and...

This chapter examines the recent evolution of inflation and its drivers in Greece, as well as the policies undertaken to limit its increase and mitigate its impact on households and firms. Greece is an interesting case as the current inflationary episode and the challenges it creates for real...

French consumer price inflation (as measured by the HICP) rose by 6.2% in September 2022 as compared to September 2021, against 10% in the euro area. Inflation rose less rapidly in France than in the euro area primarily due to a less rapid rise in energy prices: energy prices contributed to...

Like in other European countries, several supply shocks (bottlenecks related to the end of the pandemic, tensions in international gas and oil prices, and war in Ukraine) have led to a rise in the inflation rate in Spain since March 2021. This has been amplified by the functioning of energy...

Italian inflation has risen to 9.4% in September 2022. Energy goods have been the primary driver of the inflation surge since the fall of 2021, but price increases are now spreading to the whole economy, with 'core' inflation at 5.3%. Since Italy's industries heavily rely on gas as an energy...

Hungary has a history of high inflation rates. After the transformation period inflation reached up to 35% in the early 1990ies. Since then, economic policy measures contributed to signifi-cantly lower inflation and during the mid-2010s it was even close to zero. Inflation rates have begun to...

Inflation in Austria started to rise from mid-2021 during recovery from the CORONA crisis. The Russian invasion in Ukraine and the heavy increases in energy prices made things worse and brought inflation to over 10%. The government did not enter direct formal negotiations with social partners...

Inflation in Austria started to rise from mid-2021 during recovery from the CORONA crisis. The Russian invasion in Ukraine and the heavy increases in energy prices made things worse and brought inflation to over 10%. The government did not enter direct formal negotiations with social partners...

This national case study will investigate recent inflationary developments in Croatia by combining quantitative analysis with a qualitative overview of policy making. It collects data regarding inflationary developments, wages and other key variables in Croatia's economy. The task of this study...

Germany has suffered an inflationary shock broadly commensurate with that of the Euro Area as a whole, with energy playing a slightly larger, food a somewhat smaller than average role. Because of differences in consumption patterns, the current inflationary surge hits low-income households...

Do labour institutions influence how wages respond to the business cycle? Such responsiveness can then shape several economic outcomes, including unemployment. In this paper, we examine the role of two key labour market institutions - collective bargaining and temporary contracts - upon wage...

Do labour institutions influence how wages respond to the business cycle? Such responsiveness can then shape several economic outcomes, including unemployment. In this paper, we examine the role of two key labour market institutions - collective bargaining and temporary contracts - upon wage...

The increase in the real wages of British workers over the last one hundred years is often attributed to the growth in labour productivity, but this has rarely been confirmed. In the research reported here, this ascription is confronted with annual observations on wages and productivity spanning...

Why have the real (consumption) wages of U.S. workers risen since the nineteenth century? Some economists answer that increases in real wages have followed increases in labor productivity over time. In this paper, this hypothesized association is confronted with annual observations of changes in...

We challenge the view that Centrally Planned Economies functioned well until the early 1970s, delivering high economic growth and better living standards. Judged by real wages as the most widely used historical living standard indicator, only in the 1970s did Bulgarian living standards surpass...

The world has experienced rapid productivity growth in the last three decades, but has this growth reflected in wages? In theory, under certain conditions, workers earn their marginal product so that productivity growth feeds into wages on a one-to-one basis. Given the contradictory literature,...

In their 1993 book, Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway contend that US unemployment during the twentieth century can be largely explained by movements in the "adjusted real wage rate", that is, the real hourly wage rate divided by labor productivity. In particular, the authors suggest that...

Real wages in the European Union continued their decline in 2023-despite an acceleration in nominal wage growth and falling inflation rates. For the current year, there are tentative only signs of a slow recovery of the purchasing power of wages. A resumption of real wage growth would stabilize...

Do labour institutions influence how wages respond to the business cycle? Such responsiveness can then shape several economic outcomes, including unemployment. In this paper, we examine the role of two key labour market institutions - collective bargaining and temporary contracts - upon wage...