During prolonged economic recessions when the normal cyclical expansion of output fails to materialize, the topic of the ‘cyclical behaviour of wages’ has emerged as an area of debate. In 1985, the British Treasury claimed that academic studies into the cyclical behaviour of wages demonstrated that a cut in wages would increase employment. Wages in the Business Cycle contests this argument by presenting the results of original, empirical work which illustrates the absence of any systematic empirical regularity to wage movements over the business cycle.
Jonathan Michie argues that the re-emergence of this debate must be seen within the context of the theory of the ‘labour demand function’, representing an attempt to challenge the Keynesian theoretical assumptions implicit in the bulk of applied macro economic work up to the late 1970s.
- ISBN10 1472513185
- ISBN13 9781472513182
- Publish Date 7 November 2013 (first published 1 March 1987)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 256
- Language English