Missing Wage Inflation? Estimating the Natural Rate of Unemployment in a Nonlinear DSGE Model

During the recovery from the global financial crisis, most advanced economies have experienced a surprisingly weak response of wage inflation to the decline in unemployment. In this study, we investigate whether downward wage rigidity (DWR) is the source of the flattening wage Phillips curve and the lack of wage inflation in the four advanced economies: Japan, the euro area, the UK and the US. We estimate a nonlinear New Keynesian model with asymmetric wage adjustment costs and the natural rate of unemployment. Wage adjustment costs are found to be highly asymmetric in Japan, the euro area and the UK, but not in the US. The L-shaped wage Phillips curves between wage inflation and the unemployment gap clearly emerge in these three economies. Our policy simulations present a possibility that the missing wage inflation is not a permanent phenomenon and wage inflation is likely to reappear with further improvement in the labor market. Our analysis shows the usefulness of incorporating DWR into models for understanding the background of missing wage inflation and obtaining monetary policy implications.