Modelling Shifts in the Wage-Price and Unemployment-Inflation Relationships in Italy, Poland and the Uk

Abstract

The relationship between wages, prices, productivity, inflation and unemployment in Italy, Poland, and the UK between the 1960s and the early 1990s is modelled as a cointegrated vector autoregression subject to regime shifts. For each of these economies there is clear evidence of a change in the underlying equilibria of this sector of the economy. Hypotheses concerning the similarity of the transition from a rigid to a flexible labour market are tested.