2.9.2 Flexibility of nominal wages
Many orthodox Keynesians place money wage rigidity at the centre of Keynes’s
explanation of involuntary unemployment in The General Theory (see
Modigliani, 1944, 2003; Snowdon and Vane, 1999b; Snowdon, 2004a). Keynes
demonstrated in the General Theory that the way in which nominal wage cuts
would cure unemployment would operate primarily through their impact on
the interest rate. If wage cuts allowed further reductions of the price level,
this would increase the real value of the money supply, lower interest rates
and stimulate investment spending. In terms of Figure 2.6, panel (b), the
falling money wage shifts the aggregate supply curve from W0AS to W1AS
(where W1 < W0). The economy would return to full employment at e2. The
price mechanism has allowed aggregate demand to increase without government
intervention in the form of an aggregate demand stimulus. However, as
we will see more clearly in Chapter 3, section 3.4.2, Keynes introduced two
reasons why this ‘Keynes effect’ might fail. The existence of a liquidity trap
which prevents the interest rate from falling or an interest-inelastic investment
schedule could prevent falling prices from stimulating aggregate demand
via changes in the interest rate. In terms of Figure 2.6, panel (b), these
possible limitations of deflation as a route to recovery would show up as an
AD curve which becomes vertical below e1; that is, the economy is prevented
from moving from e1 to e2.
For Keynes the policy of allowing money wages to fall for a given money
supply could, in theory, produce the same effects as a policy of expanding the
money supply with a given nominal wage. But since this was the case,
monetary policy was subject to the same limitations as wage cutting as a
method of securing full employment. However, a severe deflation of prices
would also be likely to have adverse repercussions on business expectations,
which could lead to further declines of aggregate demand (see Keynes, 1936,
p. 269). The impact of severe deflation on the propensity to consume via
distributional effects was also likely to be ‘adverse’ (Keynes, 1936, p. 262).
In summing up these issues, Keynes took a pragmatic stance.
Having regard to human nature and our institutions, it can only be a foolish person
who would prefer a flexible wage policy to a flexible money policy … to suppose
that a flexible wage policy is a right and proper adjunct of a system which on the
whole is one of laissez-faire, is the opposite of the truth. (Keynes, 1936, pp. 268–
9; see also Modigliani, 2003)
Because of these various limitations of the price mechanism, Keynes was
convinced that the authorities would need to take positive action in order to
eliminate involuntary unemployment. Unless they did so the system could
find itself caught in a situation of underemployment equilibrium, by which he
meant the tendency of market economies to remain in a chronic condition of
subnormal activity for a considerable period ‘without any marked tendency
either towards recovery or towards complete collapse’ (Keynes, 1936, p. 249).
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