REAL WAGE STAGNANCY: EVIDENCE FROM TAIWAN

Li-Hsuan Huang and Hsin-Yi Huang ()
Additional contact information
Li-Hsuan Huang: Department of Economics, National Central University, 300 Chungda Road, Chungli 320, Taiwan
Hsin-Yi Huang: Department of Economics, National Central University, 300 Chungda Road, Chungli 320, Taiwan
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Julia Hsin-Yi Huang

The Singapore Economic Review (SER), 2020, vol. 65, issue 02, 485-506

Abstract: This study examines how and why the gap between economic growth and real wage growth in Taiwan is widening, a phenomenon that contrasts sharply with South Korea, which has a similar industrial structure to that of Taiwan. We empirically demonstrate that, despite the continued growth of labor productivity, the benefits from economic growth allocated to workers have been falling, and that this process has accelerated following the 2008–2009 financial crisis. The labor market institutional effect contributed partially to the problem. Workers’ purchasing power, measured by the real consumption wage rate, has been declining for a relatively long period, implying significant deterioration of terms-of-trade, and cutting real wage growth by as much as 2.23% per year. The terms-of-trade effect is particularly prominent in the manufacturing sector, which is highly export-oriented. Moreover, we found cash wages to be very sensitive to the rise in the rate of unemployment, and to the changes in output performance of the industry in which the workers are employed. The latter factor significantly reduced the cash wages paid to workers in the manufacturing sector, which highlighted the waning of workers’ bargaining power regarding wages, as well as the negative impact of globalization on the labor market. We therefore conclude that the deterioration of terms-of-trade, increases in the aggregate unemployment rate, the adverse globalization effect and the institutional effect might be the main driving forces for real wage stagnancy in Taiwan.

Keywords: Real wage stagnancy; labor productivity; nonwage labor cost; Taiwan; South Korea (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0217590816500417
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:wsi:serxxx:v:65:y:2020:i:02:n:s0217590816500417

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

DOI: 10.1142/S0217590816500417

Access Statistics for this article

The Singapore Economic Review (SER) is currently edited by Euston Quah

More articles in The Singapore Economic Review (SER) from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().