Wage Contracts with Incomplete and Costly Information / Joshua Aizenman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Aizenman, Joshua.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w1150.

NBER working paper series no. w1150

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 1983.

Summary:

Optimal wage indexation, as derived by Gray, was subject to criticism due to a lack of efficient use of information; failure to clear the market which resulted in non-optimal contracts; and the lack of an explicit use of welfare criteria. The purpose of this paper is to derive a wage contract scheme that is free from the above criticism, but is capable of preserving the insight of Cray's analysis. In so doing the analysis reveals the role of costs of information collection in a world characterized by incomplete information.The analysis focuses also on the interaction between wage indexation and costly information collection as alternative adjustment schemes.It is shown that the first depends only on relative variances, whereas the second also depends on aggregate volatility. The justification for labor contracts hinges on the cost of information collection and last minute wage negotiation.

Notes:

Print version record

June 1983.