Suchergebnisse

AbstractHow common are wage–price spirals, and what has happened in their aftermath? We construct a new historical database of wage–price spirals—identified as episodes with consumer price inflation and average nominal wage growth rising jointly for at least a year—going back to the 1960s for a large sample of advanced economies. We find that only about a quarter of such episodes were followed by sustained accelerations in wages and prices. Instead, nominal wage growth and inflation tended to stabilize at a higher level on average, and then gradually revert, with real wage growth broadly unchanged. A decomposition of average wage dynamics during wage–price spiral episodes using a wage Phillips curve suggests that nominal wage growth normally stabilizes at levels consistent with observed inflation and labour market tightness. After historical episodes exhibiting rising inflation, falling real wages, and tightening labour markets—similar to what was observed in the early post‐COVID‐19 recovery in 2021—inflation tended to decline and nominal wage growth to rise, allowing real wages to gradually catch up. Our findings suggest that an acceleration of nominal wages against a backdrop of rising inflation does not necessarily signal that a persistent wage–price spiral dynamic is taking hold.

AbstractBeyond immediate health risks, the COVID-19 pandemic poses a variety of stressors, which may require expensive or unavailable strategies during a pandemic (e.g., therapy, socialising). Here, we asked whether musical engagement is an effective strategy for socio-emotional coping. During the first lockdown period (April–May 2020), we surveyed changes in music listening and making behaviours of over 5000 people, with representative samples from three continents. More than half of respondents reported engaging with music to cope. People experiencing increased negative emotions used music for solitary emotional regulation, whereas people experiencing increased positive emotions used music as a proxy for social interaction. Light gradient-boosted regressor models were used to identify the most important predictors of an individual's use of music to cope, the foremost of which was, intriguingly, their interest in "coronamusic." Overall, our results emphasise the importance of real-time musical responses to societal crises, as well as individually tailored adaptations in musical behaviours to meet socio-emotional needs.

As counsellors, educators, and helping professionals in small communities, we were curious about the relationship between personal and professional identity. We wondered how people like ourselves negotiate role, view our contributions, and construe our place in history. Working within a narrative inquiry paradigm, our approach was both autoethnographic and collaborative. Each of us contributed a piece of autobiographical writing, and we pooled the texts for thematic analysis. Using polyphonic montage, we compare two of the analyses, and interpret what they reveal about identity and role. Through telling and hearing stories of experience, we have pieced together autoethnographic texts to speak beyond the self about a vision of community and making a difference.