Anticipated and Unanticipated Wage Changes, Wage Risk, and Intertemporal Labour Supply

Luigi Pistaferri

No 3628, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We address the question of how labour supply responds to anticipated wage growth, unanticipated wage growth, and wage risk. We use the 1989-93 panel section of the Bank of Italy SHIW, which collects individual-based quantitative expectation of future wage growth. The use of subjective expectations has several advantages. First, subjective expectations provide information on the evolution and riskiness of future wages that the econometrician may never hope to observe. Second, they allow to control directly for the forecast error, thus avoiding inconsistency in short panels. Finally, controlling for anticipated and unanticipated wage changes avoids the need of specifying instruments for the growth rate of wages, which is usually hard to predict. We find that the intertemporal elasticity of substitution is precisely estimated and slightly larger than previous micro estimates. A parametric permanent innovation in wages impacts positively the rate of growth of labour supply. The impact of wage risk is consistent with the theory, but of negligible magnitude.

Keywords: Labour supply; Subjective expectations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D91 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-11
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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