Wage Bargaining and Inflation: Perception Thresholds in the Labor Market and the Impact on Distribution and Economic Development – Evidence From Two Behavioral Experiments

Abstract

This paper examines the effects of inflation on both worker and employers wage bargaining on the labor market and the impact on distribution and economic development through two behavioral experiments. The findings of experiment A support the wage lag hypothesis, indicating that inflation alters the distribution, favoring companies while disadvantaging workers. Later workers then enforced higher wages, which overcompensated the expansionary effect, why expansive monetary policy which result in inflation is likely to be ineffective over the long term, detrimental and unfair. Experiment B explored how workers respond to inflation in wage demands and found that they do not act rationally. Instead, there were perception thresholds, showing that wage adjustments happen first disproportionally in reaction to inflation and then abrupt. This challenges the rationality assumption in DSGE-models.