Define the real wage, Macroeconomics

Assignment Help:

Q. Define the Real wage?

Consider the following scenario. You work full time and during January 2008 you make 2000 euro after tax. A certain basket of goods and services costs 100 euro in January that means that your salary will buy you 20 such baskets.

In February, you receive a 10% wage increase and you make 2200 euro after tax. Does this imply that you can purchase 10% more baskets - which is 22 - in February? Well, not essentially.

Number of baskets that you can purchase in February depends on the possible changes in prices as well. If price of a basket increases by 3% to 103 euro your 2200 will buy you 2200/103 = 21.36 baskets of 7% more than in January. Albeit your wage has increased by 10%, you can only increase your consumption of baskets by 7%. We say that real wage has increased by 7%.

Officially, we define real wage as the nominal wage divided by a price index (characteristically CPI). In the instance above, your real wage was 20 in January and 21.36 in February if we use the price of basket as a price index. Remember that nominal wage will tell you your wage in units of currency whereas the real wage will tell you your wage in baskets of services and goods and this is more significant to us.

So we care about increases in real wages not in the nominal wages. If you found out that Ken who works in another country, got a 50% increase in his wage every year, you can initially be quite happy for Ken. If you then found out that inflation in country where Ken works is 70%, you should actually feel sorry for him. His real wage is 1.5/1.7 = 88% of his real wage year before - a real wage cut by 12%.


Related Discussions:- Define the real wage

Assignment help, Consider the economic data for Country A: Unemployment lev...

Consider the economic data for Country A: Unemployment level of 15% Natural Rate of Unemployment is 6%. Required Reserves is 25% C = 50 + 0.75Y; I = 600; G = 250 (note: T = 200 for

Exam, real gdp measures?

real gdp measures?

Market demand curve, The entire market is capture by a single firm which ca...

The entire market is capture by a single firm which can produce at a constant average and marginal cost of AC = MC = 10. The firm faces a market demand curve given by Q = 60 ? P.

Welfare economic, Write the compensation principal of socitovsky

Write the compensation principal of socitovsky

The aggregate demand curve, The aggregate demand curve shows the combinatio...

The aggregate demand curve shows the combinations of the price level and the level of output at which the goods and money markets are simultaneously in equilibrium. Let us now go o

What are the economic reasons for protectionism, Question 1: (a) What ...

Question 1: (a) What are the characteristics of market and command economies? (b) In a number of countries in recent years, there has been a movement towards a greater rel

Principal causes of high population growth, List and briefly describe the p...

List and briefly describe the principal causes of high population growth in developing countries and the major consequences.

Trade in services - strategic considerations, Trade in Services - strategic...

Trade in Services - strategic considerations: India has emerged as a major exporter of services, bringing about a change in our negotiating position at the WTO. India's trade

Multiple regression analysis, In multiple regression analysis, before testi...

In multiple regression analysis, before testing the significance of the individual regression coefficients, (a) the intercept must equal 0. (b) the multiple standard error of the e

Population growth is greater than the growth of real output, If population ...

If population growth is greater than the growth of real output, A. real per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth will be less than the growth of real Gross Domestic Product

Write Your Message!

Captcha
Free Assignment Quote

Assured A++ Grade

Get guaranteed satisfaction & time on delivery in every assignment order you paid with us! We ensure premium quality solution document along with free turntin report!

All rights reserved! Copyrights ©2019-2020 ExpertsMind IT Educational Pvt Ltd