Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/127455 
Year of Publication: 
2015
Citation: 
[Journal:] IZA Journal of European Labor Studies [ISSN:] 2193-9012 [Volume:] 4 [Issue:] 13 [Publisher:] Springer [Place:] Heidelberg [Year:] 2015 [Pages:] 1-13
Publisher: 
Springer, Heidelberg
Abstract: 
We estimate real wage cyclicality in the period compressed between 1987 and 2013 using a large administrative dataset of workers in Spain. Real wages are weakly procyclical in Spain and focusing on differences in different phases of the business cycle, we find that differences across expansions and recessions are significant, with an even lower real wage cyclicality in recessions. Furthermore, higher levels of unemployment do not translate into additional real wages adjustments when the economy is contracting, while lower levels of unemployment during expansions have incremental effects on wage elasticity. This general result holds after accounting for differences in tenure, type of contract and age categories. Nevertheless, wages of newly-hired workers are the most sensitive to the business cycle and exhibit the lowest asymmetric pattern between expansions and recessions. At the other end, wages of workers with more than six years of tenure can be characterized as the most protected against economic downturns. The same is true for fixed-term vs. permanent workers, as well as for young vs. older workers.
Subjects: 
Wage cyclicality
Downward wage rigidity
Social security data
JEL: 
W32
J31
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article

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