Austrians, do you believe wages are sticky downwards?

according to you prices are random. i guess they are 'stuck' to wherever they are.

What's the time frame? 

Yes they are sticky, but not for praxeological or psychological reasons, but because of policy that distorts the free market.

Alchian, who while not Austrian does seem to be greatly appreciated by many Austrians, argues that there can be solid economic reasons for sticky wages, specifically that it may be in the worker's best interest to refuse a wage cut and lose his job in order to search for better jobs elsewhere.

Coase, what you're describing is just supply and demand at work, not sticky wages.

Consultant:

Yes they are sticky, but not for praxeological or psychological reasons, but because of policy that distorts the free market.

You believe all wage stickiness is explicable by government policy?

Could you list those policies, please?

Its psychological speculation. They might be sticky. Donno. Test it. /yawn.

Monetary policy. Minumum wages. Unionized labor contracts.

Coase:

Alchian, who while not Austrian does seem to be greatly appreciated by many Austrians, argues that there can be solid economic reasons for sticky wages, specifically that it may be in the worker's best interest to refuse a wage cut and lose his job in order to search for better jobs elsewhere.

  Coase,   That a wage-earner refuse a lower wage does not make wages sticky.  A wage-earner ultimately does not decide whether or not the employer wants to pay him the wage asked for.  As such, if the wage-earner does not want to accept a lower wage that wage-earner effectively becomes voluntarily unemployed.  However, wages themselves still move downwards.

 

To be fair, some Austrians that are proponents of Monetary Equilibrium Theory do believe, to some degree, that prices are indeed sticky downwards, but only under the condition of what they call monetary disequilibrium, that is, when there prevails a wide spread economic excess demand to hold money.

Sticky wages are wages that are resistant to change, no? Then doesn't the above situation describe sticky wages? Alchian simply explains it in terms of imperfect information and the costs of acquiring information rather than, say, animal spirits. I suppose following from this it could be argued that "sticky wages" is a poor/useless/meaningless way of looking at the problem, an argument I may be inclined to agree with, but strictly speaking it is addressing sticky wages.

Do i need to point out that if you are unemployed your wage has dropped to zero ?

Neoclassical,

I am a little wary of joining the fray, but I will against my common sense. ;) 

I argue that  wages, in a completely free labor market, are "sticky" to the degree at which an employer is bounded by the following:

1. Difficult to break, without incurring greater costs, labor contracts guarateeing wages for a finite and defined period of time.
2. The notion that lower wages willl lead to lower productivity, and as such the employer decides to maintain wage levels.
3. Similar to above, lag-time between the beginning of deflation and the decision to cut wages, caused by an array of reasons, mostly related to not immediately knowing how much wages need to fall to maintain profits.

Nevertheless, I hold that in a free market the labor market will still move back towards equilibrium, even if the movement is not as smooth as some may like to ascribe it when elucidating their theory.

Jonathan M. F. Catalán, I bet you're hiding beautiful eyes behind those sunglasses.

That was an excellent reply. I do wonder if Austrians, on average, would agree, though.