Monetary policy and the wage inflation-unemployment tradeoff

Using newly assembled data for 18 advanced economies between 1870 and 2019, I study how monetary policy affects wage inflation and unemployment and document two key findings regarding their tradeoff. First, the wage Phillips curve displays a time-varying slope. Second, the tradeoff becomes weaker in low price inflation environments due to a stronger unemployment rate and a muted wage inflation response to monetary policy. These findings lend support to the idea that monetary policy has state-dependent effects with the central banks' ability in exploring the tradeoff being impaired by a low price inflation environment.