We test whether firms react to changes in the wages and size of their competitors. We use a unique institutional feature of public procurement auctions in Brazil: the moment in which the auction ends is random. For close auctions, winner and runner-up are as good as randomly assigned. We first...

We use a novel large-scale survey of firms, implemented in Denmark in 2021 and linked to administrative data, to study why firms lay off workers instead of cutting wages. Our questions on layoffs, wage cuts, and the link between them provide new insights into firms' strategies for adjusting...

We investigate how firms adjust to demand shocks when wages and employment determination are regulated. Using firm-level data for the Italian metal engineering industry from 2009 to 2021, we estimate the elasticity of the wage bill to changes in firm's real sales. We disentangle the effect on...

We introduce dynamic incentive contracts into a model of inflation and unemployment dynamics. Our main result is that wage cyclicality from incentives neither affects the slope of the Phillips curve for prices nor dampens unemployment’s response to shocks. The impulse response of unemployment...

We develop a parsimonious New Keynesian macro-finance model with downward nominal rigidities to understand secular and cyclical movements in Treasury bond premia. Downward nominal rigidities create state-dependence in output and inflation dynamics: a higher level of inflation makes prices more...

In employment relationships, a wage is an installment payment on an implicit long-term agreement between a worker and a firm. The price of labor that impacts firm's hiring decisions, instead, reflects the hiring wage as well as the impact of economic conditions at the time of hiring on future...

We show that a negative relative demand shock in a sector with downwardly rigid prices, like the service sector, can generate substantial inflation. Such a shock induces an equilibrium decline in the relative price of services. If price adjustment costs are non-existent or symmetric, then this...

We investigate how the incompleteness of an employment contract - discretionary and non-contractible effort - can affect an employer's decision about cutting nominal wages. Using matched employer-employee payroll data from Great Britain, linked to a survey of managers, we find support for the...

We recover the persistent ("core") component of nominal wage growth over the past twenty-five years in the United States. Our approach combines worker-level data with time-series smoothing methods and can disentangle the common persistence of wage inflation from the persistence specific to some...

Governments use short-time work (STW) schemes to subsidize job preservation during crises. We study the take-up of STW and its effects on worker outcomes and firm behavior using German administrative data from 2009 to 2021. Establishments utilizing STW tend to have higher wages, be larger, and...

We propose a generalized Rotemberg pricing scheme which is able to explain important aspects of the observed nonlinear behavior of price adjustment at the macroeconomic level, such as higher pass-through in response to larger shocks, a positive impact of trend inflation on price flexibility, and...

The recent surge in inflation led many unions and firms to alter their bargaining and wage-setting policies. Using novel German firm-level survey data, we document the extent of state dependence in wage setting across firms and workers during periods of high and low inflation. We find state...

Inflationary processes are closely linked to wage-price spirals - such spirals can be triggered by many factors, including natural resource price shocks, depreciation and inflationary demand. Empirically, the correlation between changes in nominal unit labour costs and the price level is strong...

This paper studies the impact of downward wage rigidity on wage and employment dynamics after the outbreak of major recessions in Spain. Downward wage rigidity stems from collective agreements, which set province-sector-skill specific minimum wage floors for all workers. By exploiting variation...

This note develops an econometric model of inflation dynamics to assess recent developments. We find that most of the rapid decline in price pressures achieved in 2023 owes to the normalization of supply chains. With supply-chain disruptions now largely resolved, future progress toward...

Governments use short-time work (STW) schemes to subsidize job preservation during crises. We study the take-up of STW and its effects on worker outcomes and firm behavior using German administrative data from 2009 to 2021. Establishments utilizing STW tend to have higher wages, be larger, and...

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...

We introduce dynamic incentive contracts into a model of inflation and unemployment dynamics. Our main result is that wage cyclicality from incentives neither affects the slope of the Phillips curve for prices nor dampens unemployment dynamics. The impulse response of unemployment in economies...

Heterogeneous-agent New Keynesian models with sticky nominal wages usually assume that wage-setting unions demand the same amount of hours from all households. As a result, unions do not take account of the fact that (i) households are heterogeneous in their willingness to work, and that (ii)...

We analyze a model in which workers direct their search on and off the job and employer–worker match productivities are private information. Employers can commit neither to post contracts such that wages are a function of tenure nor to disregard counteroffers. In this context, potential...

This paper introduces innovative, newly developed forward-looking indicators of negotiated wage growth in the euro area using data on collective bargaining agreements from seven countries: Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Austria and Greece. The paper demonstrates how...