Nominal Wage Stickiness and Aggregate Supply in the Great Depression / Ben S. Bernanke, Kevin Carey.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bernanke, Ben S.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Carey, Kevin.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w5439.

NBER working paper series no. w5439

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 1996.

Summary:

Building on earlier work by Eichengreen and Sachs, we use data for 22 countries to study the role of wage stickiness in propagating the Great Depression. Recent research suggests that monetary shocks, transmitted internationally by the gold standard, were a major cause of the Depression. Accordingly, we use money supplies and other aggregate demand shifters as instruments to identify aggregate supply relationships. We find that nominal wages adjusted quite slowly to falling prices, and that the resulting increases in real wages depressed output. These findings leave open the question of why wages were so inertial in the face of extreme labor market conditions.

Notes:

Print version record

January 1996.