Wage rigidities and labour market performance in the Czech Republic

The main goal of our contribution is to evaluate the impact of structural characteristics of the Czech labour market on the business cycle and to quantify the role of wage rigidities in the labour market performance. The Czech economy is represented by a small dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of an open economy. The model economy consists of three types of agents: firms, households and central bank. Model parameters are estimated using the quarterly data of the Czech Republic for the period from the first quarter of 2000 to the last quarter of 2014. The comparison of two alternative wage setting model schemes shows that the Nash bargaining wage setting with the real wage persistence fits the data better than the Calvo type of wage rigidities modelling approach. The existence of hiring costs in the Czech economy was proved as significant and the estimated hiring costs account for 0.77% of the gross domestic product.