{"title":"Sticky wages and the Great Depression: evidence from the United Kingdom","authors":"Jason Lennard","doi":"10.1093/ereh/heac014","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"How sticky were wages during the Great Depression? Although classic accounts emphasise the importance of nominal rigidity in amplifying deflationary shocks, the evidence is limited. In this paper, I calculate the degree of nominal wage rigidity in the United Kingdom between the wars using new granular data covering millions of wages. I find that nominal wages changed infrequently but that wage cuts were more common than wage rises on average. Nominal wage adjustment fluctuated over time and by state, so that in 1931 amid falling output and prices more than one-third of workers received wage cuts.","PeriodicalId":51703,"journal":{"name":"European Review of Economic History","volume":"72 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2000,"publicationDate":"2022-11-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"European Review of Economic History","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ereh/heac014","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
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Abstract
How sticky were wages during the Great Depression? Although classic accounts emphasise the importance of nominal rigidity in amplifying deflationary shocks, the evidence is limited. In this paper, I calculate the degree of nominal wage rigidity in the United Kingdom between the wars using new granular data covering millions of wages. I find that nominal wages changed infrequently but that wage cuts were more common than wage rises on average. Nominal wage adjustment fluctuated over time and by state, so that in 1931 amid falling output and prices more than one-third of workers received wage cuts.
期刊介绍：
European Review of Economic History has established itself as a major outlet for high-quality research in economic history, which is accessible to readers from a variety of different backgrounds. The Review publishes articles on a wide range of topics in European, comparative and world economic history. Contributions shed new light on existing debates, raise new or previously neglected topics and provide fresh perspectives from comparative research. The Review includes full-length articles, shorter articles, notes and comments, debates, survey articles, and review articles. It also publishes notes and announcements from the European Historical Economics Society.
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