Wage Rigidity in Historical Perspective
{'Code': '04050100', 'Directorate': {'Abbreviation': 'SBE', 'LongName': 'Direct For Social, Behav & Economic Scie'}, 'Division': {'Abbreviation': 'SES', 'LongName': 'Divn Of Social and Economic Sciences'}}
{'SignBlockName': 'Daniel H. Newlon', 'PO_EMAI': None, 'PO_PHON': None}
This is an interesting and important project, which investigates the            sources of unemployment arising from economic rigidities in the wage            system used to compensate labor.  Early classical models of the                 economy assumed that wages and prices adjusted easily to changes in             economic variables, and that the labor market always employed all               workers willing to work at the going wage.  The Great Depression                provided overwhelming empirical evidence that those models were not             correct.                                                                                                                                                        Most modern models of employment include, either implicitly or                  explicitly, the concept of a natural rate of unemployment.  This is             the rate which would exist if everyone who is willing to work at a              given wage can find employment.  That is not to say unemployment will           be zero.  Some jobs are seasonal.  For instance, construction is more           prevalent in the spring and summer than in winter.  In northern                 climates some construction workers will be unemployed, at least part            of the time, during the winter months.  Such structural unemployment            is inherent in any advanced economy, and for the sake of conceptual             clarity in labor market models, is considered to constitute the so-             called natural rate of unemployment.                                                                                                                            A fundamental question of concern to analysts and policy makers is              why the actual unemployment rate might be greater than the natural              rate.  A reason suggested by economic theory is that employment cannot          adjust to changing market conditions easily, in particular real wages           (that is the purchasing power of wages) do not adjust quickly.  The             most prominent theories of wage rigidity focus on such factors as               overlapping contracts between labor and employers, efficiency wages,            and, especially, incorrect expectations of the future purchasing                power of wages.  This research examines wage rigidity in the United             States over the past century, and by doing so, it extends our                   empirical knowledge of wage rigidity in several ways.  First, a much            wider range of indicators of rigidity is analyzed than in any                   previous study.  It incorporates cross industry variation in wage               structure.                                                                                                                                                      Another innovation of this project is the use of U.S. industry wage             data dating back to 1860 to explore in depth whether there have been            structural changes in the labor market, to document the sources of              those changes, and to analyze their macroeconomic impact.  Little               comparative analysis of labor market performance across historical              periods has been done previous to this work.  Professor Miron is a              talented young empiricist, and has done fine work in analyzing the              labor market in the past.
{'FirstName': 'Steven', 'LastName': 'Allen', 'PI_MID_INIT': 'G', 'PI_SUFX_NAME': None, 'PI_FULL_NAME': 'Steven G Allen', 'EmailAddress': None, 'NSF_ID': '000345233', 'StartDate': '08/01/1987', 'EndDate': None, 'RoleCode': 'Principal Investigator'}
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{'Code': '1320', 'Text': 'Economics'}
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