An economic analysis of the impact of labor productivity on the dynamics of total wages in Iraq for the period 1994–2021

Rafid F. Mohammed

Middle East Development Journal, 2025, vol. 17, issue 1, 129-137

Abstract: The study employed the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) methodology to analyze the relationship between labor productivity and wages in Iraq from 1994 to 2021. The findings revealed a statistically weak relationship between productivity and wages, indicating that increases in productivity were not accompanied by significant wage growth. Long-term deviations (0.19) showed that changes in wages were not driven by changes in productivity, which was attributed to the influence of external legislative factors. The study highlighted that employers continued to hire workers at relatively low wages despite increased productivity, reflecting an imbalance between productivity and wages. It recommended revisiting labor laws and legislation related to workers’ rights and wages to achieve a balance between workers’ needs and employers’ requirements and to enhance the value of workers in the market by better aligning wages with productivity levels.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/17938120.2025.2482633 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rmdjxx:v:17:y:2025:i:1:p:129-137

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rmdj20

DOI: 10.1080/17938120.2025.2482633

Access Statistics for this article

Middle East Development Journal is currently edited by Raimundo Soto

More articles in Middle East Development Journal from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().