Philippine Standard time

Effects of Gendered Wage-Differentials and Employment Shares on Price Inflation and Unemployment Rate


Structural features of labor markets such as the microeconomics of wage-setting are often suspected to have implications for inflation and unemployment. Features often overlooked in traditional macroeconomic explanations of inflation are gendered wage-differential and employment shares. This study builds a simple theoretical model for price inflation and unemployment rate based on a gendered central bank loss function and on a gendered Phillips curve. Guided by insights from the model, we test whether gendered wage-differential and employment shares, along with the interest rate significantly influence price-setting behavior and unemployment rates in the Philippines. Using DOLS and ARDL-ECM methods, and sectoral, regional, and female wage dummies, we estimate the effects of gendered wage-differential, employment shares, and interest rate on price inflation and gendered unemployment rates. Two panel datasets are constructed and used in the estimation to exploit greater information from the PSA regional and individual levels of data for the 2013-2017 period and 2010Q1-2022Q4 period. The DOLS estimators show that gendered wage-differential and interest rate have positive effects, while employment shares have negative effects on price inflation and gendered unemployment rates both in the long-run and short-run. Gendered wage-differential, employment share, and interest rate effects are likewise stronger in the short-run than in the long-run. In contrast, the ARDL-ECM estimators suggest that the effect of interest rate is negative on price inflation in the long-run, negative (positive) on gendered employment (unemployment) in the short-run, and nil in the other time periods. We attribute the difference in results to the shorter time period and use of annual observations in the DOLS estimation.


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