Why Do Workers Dislike Inflation? Wage Erosion and Conflict Costs

Joao Guerreiro, Jonathon Hazell, Chen Lian and Christina Patterson

No 32956, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: How costly is inflation to workers? Answers to this question have focused on the path of real wages during inflationary periods. We argue that workers must take costly actions (“conflict”) to have nominal wages catch up with inflation, meaning there are welfare costs even if real wages do not fall as inflation rises. We study a menu-cost style model, where workers choose whether to engage in conflict with employers to secure a wage increase. We show that, following a rise in inflation, wage catch-up resulting from more frequent conflict does not raise welfare. Instead, the impact of inflation on worker welfare is determined by what we call “wage erosion”—how inflation would lower real wages if workers’ conflict decisions did not respond to inflation. As a result, using observed wage growth to measure worker welfare understates the costs of inflation. We conduct a survey showing that workers are willing to sacrifice 1.75% of their wages to avoid conflict. Calibrating the model to survey data, incorporating conflict significantly raises the costs of inflation for workers.

JEL-codes: E24 E31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ipr, nep-lab and nep-mon
Note: EFG LS ME
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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