An Exposition on the Nature of the Wage Curve
探讨失业与工资关系的工资曲线形状，指出曲线可能在高失业率时上扬，并基于社会心理学中的地位概念构建模型，为这一现象提供理论解释。
The relationship between unemployment and pay has recently been encapsulated in terms of a whereby increasing unemployment acts to curb the general level of pay; see Blanchflower and Oswald (1990) hereafter BO. Results from BO, and elsewhere, allude to the possibility of an upturn in the curve with the level of pay tending to rise as unemployment passes some critical rate. BO attribute the upturn observed in their study to a data aberration, claiming that such a finding ... appears to go against commensense.' The shape of the wage curve has important policy implications and although the empirical evidence for an upturn is relatively weak, such a possibility should not be dismissed a priori. The aim of this note is to stimulate further research into the nature of the wage curve by deriving sufficient conditions for an upturn from a formal model. The idea is to supplement the standard neo-classical model of the wage curve with behavioural assumptions drawn from the social-psychology literature.2 The note concentrates in particular on the concept of status. Workers are assumed to be primarily, but not exclusively, concerned with the monetary rewards to an occupation. The status associated with a particular occupation plays a significant role in their decision making.