TY - JOUR AU - Blanchard,Olivier J. TI - The Wage Price Spiral JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 1771 PY - 1985 Y2 - December 1985 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w1771 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w1771.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Olivier J. Blanchard International Monetary Fund Economic Counsellor and Director Research Department 700 19th Street, NW Rm. 10-700 Washington DC, 20431 Tel: 202-623-7825 Fax: 202-623-7271 E-Mail: blanchar@mit.edu AB - This paper rehabilitates the old wage price spiral. It shows that, after an increase in aggregate demand, the process of adjustment of nominal prices and nominal wages results from attempts by workers to maintain or increase their real wage and by firms to maintain or increase their markups of prices over wages. Under continuous price and wage setting, the process of adjustment would be instantaneous ; under staggering of price and wage decisions, the adjustment takes time. The more inflexible real wages and markups are to shifts in demand, the higher is the degree of price level inertia, the longer lasting are the effects of aggregate demand on output. ER -