My impression, reinforced by the papers at this conference, is that many of the newer empirical structural models of price inflation posit a central role for real marginal cost but seem to have little to say about its determination or that of its main component, labor compensation.
This neglect may reflect the difficulty of specifying the aggregate dynamics of an atomistic labor market characterized by pronounced heterogeneity, significant informational imperfections, and important adjustment costs. By comparison, these complications seem less severe in product markets, which for the most part are more transparent and easier to analyze.