Wage Dynamics Network (WDN)

In February 2006, the Governing Council of the Eurosystem decided to establish a network in which researchers from different central banks were instructed to study wage and labour cost dynamics in the euro area.

The tasks of this network were primarily to:

  • examine, on the basis of macroeconomic data, the empirical features of wage and labour cost dynamics for the area as a whole, for each Member State and for the different sectors of the economy, as well as their determining factors and its interaction with the inflation dynamics;
  • examine, on the basis of microeconomic data, wage behaviour and possible related rigidities at national and sectoral level, as well as their consequences for wage costs and price formation;
  • examine the feasibility and advisability of a survey of individual companies relating to their behaviour in terms of labour costs and price setting.

In view of the excellent information gathered, the Eurosystem invited those who took part in the first survey to participate in the survey once again in 2014.

Information on this new survey, along with an analysis of the results for Belgium, and the findings in the different branches of activity are available on the Wage Dynamics Network (WDN 3) webpage.

Various more specific research projects using the survey data are currently underway in different countries. Their findings will be released in separate publications.