Macroeconomic Time Series Affecting the Minimum and Average Wages of V4 Countries

Abstract

The study deals with the evaluation of the impact of macroeconomic indicators such as gross domestic product, unemployment, the implicit tax rate on labour and the consumer price index on the minimum and average wages in the countries of the Visegrad Four. The set of input analysed data is obtained from databases of national statistical offices, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and Eurostat. Since the minimum wage is influenced by state intervention, it is an intervention in the market mechanism and its costs are borne primarily by employers, it is an important indicator in assessing the impacts in the payroll field. Employers have a direct impact on the level of the average wage. From the results of derived VAR models, it cannot be argued that short-term relations in selected countries show the same regularities. However, common characteristics can be found between macroeconomic indicators and minimum and average wage. The results of the article show that if the endogenous variable is the minimum wage, there are no significant dependencies between the above-mentioned indicators. Each of the analysed countries has its own instrument for regulating the minimum wage independent of macroeconomic factors, which has been confirmed. If an average wage indicator is an endogenous variable, this variable has both a positive and negative impact on the remaining indicators analysed. The implicit tax rate on labour was evaluated as the most statistically significant indicator affecting the average wage. The results of the testing between the minimum or average wage and the macroeconomic indicators in the sense of Granger causality confirmed the fact that the development of selected macroeconomic indicators contributes to an increase in the accuracy of the forecast of the evolution of the average wage in the examined countries.