Econometrica · 2026 · Joao Guerreiro、Jonathon Hazell、Chen Lian、Christina Patterson
中文摘要
通胀对劳动者的成本有多大？对该问题的回答聚焦于通胀期间实际工资的路径。我们认为，劳动者必须采取有成本的行动（“冲突”）以使名义工资赶上通胀，这意味着即使实际工资不随通胀上升而下降，也存在福利成本。我们研究了一个菜单成本式模型，其中劳动者选择是否与雇主发生冲突以确保工资上涨。我们表明，在通胀上升之后，由更频繁的冲突导致的工资赶超并未提高福利。相反，通胀对劳动者福利的影响取决于我们所说的“工资侵蚀”——如果劳动者不因通胀而调整冲突决策，通胀将如何降低实际工资。因此，使用观察到的工资增长来衡量劳动者福利会低估通胀的成本。我们开展了一项调查，显示劳动者愿意牺牲约1.75%的工资以避免冲突。利用调查数据对模型进行校准，我们发现纳入冲突显著提高了通胀对劳动者的成本。
Abstract
How costly is inflation to workers? Answers to this question have focused on the path of real wages during inflationary periods. We argue that workers must take costly actions (“conflict”) to have nominal wages catch up with inflation, meaning there are welfare costs even if real wages do not fall as inflation rises. We study a menu‐cost style model, where workers choose whether to engage in conflict with employers to secure a wage increase. We show that, following a rise in inflation, wage catch‐up resulting from more frequent conflict does not raise welfare. Instead, the impact of inflation on worker welfare is determined by what we call “wage erosion”—how inflation would lower real wages if workers' conflict decisions did not respond to inflation. As a result, using observed wage growth to measure worker welfare understates the costs of inflation. We conduct a survey showing that workers are willing to sacrifice around 1.75% of their wages to avoid conflict. Calibrating the model to survey data, we find that incorporating conflict significantly raises the costs of inflation for workers.