IMF-新冠肺炎疫情中工资对消费者价格的传递：来自美国行业数据的证据（英）-2023.11-62页_1mb

Summary of the Paper on Wage-Price Pass-Through

Introduction and Background

• Consumer price inflation and median wage growth surged in the U.S. from 2.0% and 3.7% in 2021 to 9.1% and 6.7% in 2022, respectively, after being low for decades.
• The analysis revisits the wage-to-price pass-through, which has been limited empirically, to understand its drivers and changes, particularly during the COVID-19 recovery.
• Key policy questions include whether the relationship is structural and how wage pressures translate to inflation across sectors.

Methodology

• Link wages to consumer prices using input-output matrices to connect industry-level wages to final goods prices in the Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE) index.
• Employ local projection techniques with controls for productivity, import, and input prices to estimate impulse responses at quarterly horizons.
• Address endogeneity by testing wage inflation's feedback on wages and using job-to-job transition rates as instruments, confirming positive pass-through.

Historical Pass-Through

• Before the COVID-19 pandemic (2010–2019), wage-to-price pass-through was close to zero in goods sectors and around 10% in three quarters in services sectors, averaging stability.
• Pass-through peaked at 27.9% in services sectors within three quarters and showed sectoral variation, with higher pass-through in more labor-intensive sectors like services.

Changes During COVID-19 Recovery

• Pass-through increased sharply during the recovery (2020–2023) across both goods and services, but it declined in goods sectors and remained elevated in services sectors by 2023.
• Goods inflation saw an approximate 0.8–1.0 percentage point increase in 2021 due to higher pass-through, while services inflation saw increases of 0.7–0.8 percentage points in 2021 and 0.5 by 2022.

Key Drivers of Increased Pass-Through

• High wage growth in services sectors (e.g., exceeding 4% in some periods) significantly boosted pass-through, accounting for much of the increase post-COVID.
• Excess demand in goods sectors amplified pricing power, increasing pass-through during the recovery's early stages, but this effect faded as conditions normalized.
• Supply-side disruptions (e.g., import and input price rises) contributed to overall inflation but did not consistently amplify wage-to-price pass-through.
• Policy relevance includes the need for tighter monetary policy to rebalance labor markets, especially due to persistent labor shortages post-pandemic.

Conclusion

• The higher pass-through during the recovery reflects concurrent economic developments like wage growth and demand surges, rather than a permanent structural break.
• Pass-through is expected to decline as labor and goods markets rebalance, highlighting that wage-price spirals are not imminent but require monitoring of policies and global supply chain normalization.