Real Wages and the Business Cycle in Germany

Martyna Marczak and Thomas Beissinger ()

No 5199, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper establishes stylized facts about the cyclicality of real consumer wages and real producer wages in Germany. As detrending methods we apply the deterministic trend model, the Beveridge-Nelson decomposition, the Hodrick-Prescott filter, the Baxter-King filter and the structural time series model. The detrended data are analyzed both in the time domain and in the frequency domain. The great advantage of an analysis in the frequency domain is that it allows to assess the relative importance of particular frequencies for the behavior of real wages. In the time domain we find that both real wages display a procyclical pattern and lag behind the business cycle. In the frequency domain the consumer real wage lags behind the business cycle and shows an anticyclical behavior for shorter time periods, whereas for longer time spans a procyclical behavior can be observed. However, for the producer real wage the results in the frequency domain remain inconclusive.

Keywords: structural time series model; real wages; business cycle; frequency domain; time domain; Germany; trend-cycle decomposition; phase angle (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C22 C32 E32 J30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2010-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-lab and nep-mac
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published - published in: Empirical Economics, 2013, 44 (2), 469-490

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Related works:
Journal Article: Real wages and the business cycle in Germany (2013)
Working Paper: Real wages and the business cycle in Germany (2010)
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