Wage setters take into account the future consequences of their current wage choices in the presence of downward nominal wage rigidities. Several interesting implications arise. First, a closed-form solution for a long-run Phillips curve relates average unemployment to average wage inflation; the curve is virtually vertical for high inflation rates but becomes flatter as inflation declines. Second, macroeconomic volatility shifts the Phillips curve outward, implying that stabilization policies can play an important role in shaping the trade-off. Third, nominal wages tend to be endogenously rigid also upward, at low inflation. Fourth, when inflation decreases, volatility of unemployment increases whereas the volatility of inflation decreases: this implies a long-run trade-off also between the volatility of unemployment and that of wage inflation.

We estimate the natural rate of unemployment, often referred to as u*, in the United States using data on labor market flows, short-term and long-term inflation expectations and a forward-looking New-Keynesian Phillips curve for the 1960-2021 period. The natural rate of unemployment was at around 4.5% before the onset of the pandemic and increased to 5.9% by the end of 2021. This pronounced rise was primarily informed by strong wage growth rather than changes in inflation expectations. Despite the rise in the natural rate of unemployment, the secular trend of unemployment continued to fall and stands at around 4.2% reflecting ongoing secular developments which have been pushing down the unemployment rate over the last 30 years. Our model forecasts strong wage growth to moderate only sluggishly continuing to put upward pressure on inflation in the medium-run. We project underlying inflation to remain 0.5 percentage points above its long-run trend by the end of 2023 even if long-run inflation expectations remain well anchored. Given the importance of wage growth for the inflation outlook, we examine detailed micro data on job-filling rates, posted wages for vacant positions, and workers' reservation wages. In particular, we construct a composition-bias free measure of wage growth at the employer-job level using Burning Glass Technologies data and document strong wage growth for both teleworkable and non-teleworkable jobs. Moreover, we find that workers' reservation wages increased substantially after the pandemic. Our empirical analysis suggests that the strong wage growth is likely not a one-time adjustment of additional compensation for jobs that pose health risks to workers but rather reflects a tight labor market accompanied with a changing work-leisure trade-off.

This comprehensive book presents an original reconstruction of the different interpretations of the Phillips curve. The authors demonstrate through an in-depth analysis how it is possible to find non-neoclassical foundations in the trade-off between inflation and unemployment. The debate is presented from a historical perspective which charts the evolution of the Phillips curve from a non-neoclassical perspective, taking account of post Keynesian literature. In the first part of the book the authors focus on the origins of the Phillips curve and they critically analyse Richard Lipsey's interpretation and approach to the Phillips curve. They then explore the neoclassical and monetarist interpretation, paying special attention to the evolution of monetarism and the Keynesian critique of this approach. The Kaleckian, Keynesian and Marxist interpretations of the Phillips trade-off are then presented. Here the authors show how the relationship between inflation, unemployment and money described in these approaches accurately reflects the fundamental features of today's capitalist economies. In the final section a new Phillips curve is constructed, taking into account the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment and the hysteresis of it. Inflation, Unemployment and Money will be of interest to macroeconomists, post Keynesians and monetary and financial economists.