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September 20, 2016 at 11:31 AM
Federal Reserve officials who believe a tightening labor market is sufficient proof that inflation is on the way up have a friend in Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
With monetary policy makers beginning to rethink conventional wisdom on how inflationary pressures build, Goldman’s U.S. Economist Daan Struyven offers some evidence that may tip the scales towards raising rates sooner rather than later.
In a research note on Tuesday, Struyven seeks to answer inflation’s chicken-and-egg conundrum: when the price of french fries rises, does Joe Sixpack demand higher wages from his employer so he can afford the same amount? Or does the price rise because Joe and all his friends got a raise, and are willing to spend more money to get the same amount of the foodstuff in question? Simply put, does inflation lead, or lag, wage growth?
Using a model that strips away outliers, Struyven finds evidence that rising U.S. wages have preceded an uptick in core inflation since 1974, in stark contrast to the body of academic work which has tended to conclude that price inflation leads wage inflation.
“The implication of our findings is that the observed pick-up in wage growth may be more likely to contribute to the long and winding road to higher core PCE inflation than often believed,” the economist writes. “In addition to our expectation that tighter labor and product markets will boost inflation, the fading of any remaining disinflationary effects from oil and the dollar, and the normalization of PCE health care inflation should also move core PCE inflation gradually higher.”
Monetary policy makers appear to be divided into two camps: those who have raised the prospect that more progress should have realized on the way to the Fed’s 2 percent PCE inflation target before a monetary tightening cycle can begin in earnest, such as Chicago Fed President Charles Evans, and others who believe that the current tightening of the labor market signals inflation is in the pipeline, and monetary policy makers should act now given that rate moves affect the economy with long and variable lags.
