Category Archives: Economic fundamentals

Companies Are Paying Inflation Busting Dividends at Cost to the Rest of the Economy, Including Their Employees

How companies are paying dividends rather than investing in their business or paying employees better……and often borrow to do so.

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Striking a Bargain: Narrative Identification of Wage Bargaining Shocks

Workers and employers bargain over the surplus income generated by an employment relationship. This column uses information about key events in Germany relevant for wage negotiations, like labour strikes and the introduction of a minimum wage, to pinpoint changes in bargaining power between workers and employers. It finds that such wage bargaining ‘shocks’ are important drivers of unemployment and inflation and that their effect on wages is almost fully reflected in prices. Furthermore, they reduce the vacancy rate and increase firms’ profits and the labour share of income in the short run, but not in the long run.

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