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This paper presents a model of inflation and distribution that examines the relationship between the employment of labor and the utilization of capital. It features a structural difference between the wage Phillips curve and the price Phillips curve that gives rise to persistent changes in the real wage whenever the inflation-neutral level of activity fails to utilize the existing capital stock at its normal level. Assuming an inflation-targeting central bank that is obliged to run the system around its inflation-neutral level, these changes will reduce the gap between the inflation-neutral level and normal utilization by moving the system along a stable wage curve. In the end this implies that the inflation-neutral level of employment and full or normal utilization of capital will tendentially coincide, lending some support to the Duménil-Lévy thesis that monetary policy makes normal utilization a long-run center of gravity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Spanish economy is characterized by significant and persistent regional disparities. The Great Recession caused a severe economic downturn, marked by declining wages and rising unemployment, influenced by the internal wage devaluation policies. We investigate the relationship between wage flexibility and regional labour market resilience. We estimate a spatial panel wage curve using microdata from social security records for the period 2002–19 using geographical and time weighted regression techniques. Our findings reveal that regions with higher wage flexibility exhibit higher resilience recovery indices, highlighting the importance of wage flexibility as a short-term adjustment mechanism in response to labour market shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The novel application of a pairwise autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach provides new insights into the regional wage–unemployment rate relationship. Using this approach, the short- and long-run wage curve slope for each US state is potentially inversely related to the unemployment rate in all other states. In terms of the oft-cited Blanchflower and Oswald elasticity, there is mixed evidence in support of a - 0.1 wage curve slope. We find that the pairwise wage curve slope is driven by factors that include state-level home-ownership and education attainment. Our findings suggest that short-run wage flexibility decreased during the period following the Great Recession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]