Wage flexibility and employment fluctuations: evidencefrom the housing sector

Pischke, Jörn-Steffen ORCID: 0000-0002-6466-1874 (2016) Wage flexibility and employment fluctuations: evidencefrom the housing sector. CEP Discussion Paper (1440). London School of Economics and Political Science. Centre for Economic Performance, London, UK.

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Abstract

Many economists suspect that downward nominal wage rigidities in ongoing labor contracts are an important source of employment fluctuations over the business cycle but there is little direct empirical evidence on this conjecture. This paper compares three occupations in the housing sector with very different wage setting institutions, real estate agents, architects, and construction workers. I study the wage and employment responses of these occupations to the housing cycle, a proxy for labor demand shocks to the industry. The employment of real estate agents, whose pay is far more flexible than the other occupations, indeed reacts less to the cycle than employment in the other occupations. However, unless labor demand elasticities are large, the estimates do not suggest that the level of wage flexibility enjoyed by real estate agents would buffer employment fluctuations in response to demand shocks by more than 10 to 20 percent compared to completely rigid wages.

Item Type:	Monograph (Discussion Paper)
Official URL:	http://cep.lse.ac.uk/
Additional Information:	© 2016 The Authors
Divisions:	Centre for Economic Performance
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management
JEL classification:	E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics > E2 - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment > E24 - Macroeconomics: Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution (includes wage indexation) J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J2 - Time Allocation, Work Behavior, and Employment Determination and Creation; Human Capital; Retirement > J20 - General J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J4 - Particular Labor Markets > J44 - Professional Labor Markets and Occupations
Date Deposited:	09 Sep 2016 13:56
Last Modified:	13 Sep 2024 20:35
Funders:	Economic and Social Research Council, Economic and Social Research Council
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/67675

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