1,721,015 research outputs found
Wage coordination in new and old EU member states
Full text linkAside from employment protection laws, which have been converging, other labor market institutions in new and old EU member states, such as wage bargaining coordination and labor union density, still differ considerably. These labor market institutions also differ among the new EU member states, with the Baltic countries being much more liberal than the others. Research that pools data on old and new EU member states shows that wage coordination mechanisms can improve a country’s macroeconomic performance. Stronger wage coordination and higher union density reduce the response of inflation to the business cycle
Italy: Inching Out of the Global Crisis
No full textThe paper highlights two aspects of the policy challenges facing Italy during the crisis of 2008-2009.
First, in order to get out of the recession, there was little that Italy could do by itself, especially in terms of short-run policies. Its monetary and exchange rate policy is set by the European Central Bank (ECB). Its fiscal policy is effectively blocked by its enormous debt. Its ability to reform is hindered by the lack of social and policy consensus, and by the deterioration of the climate for public and policy debates. In this respect, the policy choice has been not to fight the recession head on, but to minimize some of its social costs. Within these limits, results have been positive.
Second, the measures that have been adopted are going to have at best a modest influence on the causes of Italy’s persistent slow growth. They are qualitatively insufficient to promote a more sustained recovery and to reactivate a growth process, the engines of which have been stalled for quite some time. One possible outcome is that Italy is likely to remain a country in relative decline
Monetary Policy Transmission, Interest Rate Rules and Inflation Targeting in Three Transition Countries
No full textIn 1991, the rate of inflation in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland was 57%, 35% and 70%. At the end of 2001, it was everywhere below 8%. We set up a small structural macro model of these three economies to account for the process of disinflation. We show that a simple macro model, with forward-looking inflation and exchange rate expectations, can adequately characterize the relationship between the output gap, inflation, the real interest rate and the exchange rate during this period. This model allows us to assess the relative importance of the interest rate and exchange rate channels in determining the path of disinflation
Independent or Coordinated? Monetary and Fiscal Policy in EMU
No full textWe examine the relations between monetary and fiscal policies in the context of a model which embodies relevant features of EMU. Our analysis suggests that, even in the absence of asymmetric shocks and of aggregate demand spillovers, EC authorities and national governments may have conflicting incentives, depending upon the relative size of demand and supply disturbances. When both aggregate demand and supply shocks are positive (negative) and the latter are large enough in absolute terms, then national governments will pursue a more expansionary (contractionary) fiscal policy
than it would be desirable from a social welfare standpoint.
Our results imply that, if the EC authorities are required to enforce a social welfare function defined over aggregate output and inflation, then it may be necessary to endow the EC with appropriate enforcement devices
with respect to the fiscal policy stance of individual member countries. This is true even if national governments do not have an incentive to adopt a time-inconsistent behavior. Hence our conclusions support the idea that the setting of fiscal policies by member countries needs to be disciplined, and in
some instances possibly over-ruled, by the EC authorities.
JEL classification: E50, E61, E63, H30.
Keywords
The role of the exchange rate regime in the process of real and nominal convergence
Full text linkThe Balassa–Samuelson (B–S) hypothesis suggests that, in catching-up countries, inflation will be comparatively higher, as prices of non-traded goods “catch up” with the growth of productivity in the tradable goods sector; as a result, these countries will experience real appreciation. However, a general result of the literature is that the B–S effect can only explain part of the excess inflation observed in European catching-up countries. One feature of these studies is their neglect of the role of the exchange rate regime in affecting price convergence. In this paper, instead, we argue that the choice of the exchange rate regime may affect nominal convergence. To show this, we first model the regime choice and, in a second stage, estimate a B–S type of regression for each regime. Our results show that, for countries that pegged to or adopted the euro, the effect of an increase in dual productivity growth (the difference in productivity growth between the traded and non-traded sectors) on the dual inflation differential is twice as large as that in “flexible” countries. We conclude that, in catching-up countries, too early adoption of the euro may foster excess inflation, beyond what would be implied by B–S convergence only
Did support for economic and political reforms increase during the post-communist transition, and if so, why?
No full textWe study the dynamics of individual support for changes in the economic and political system, using a unique dataset for 12 transition economies over the period 1991–2004. We document that support for transition was initially lower in the CIS countries and that there has been a converging trend in the support for reforms between the CIS and the Baltic and Central and Eastern European countries. We suggest several explanations for the initial divergence and the post-98 convergence in support for transition between these three groups of countries, and show that economic growth, declining income inequality and improving quality of governance have contributed to increase the support for transition. In addition, we find that increased support for the market economy and democracy in the CIS is accompanied by a larger increase in trust towards the political institutions. Our results also confirm the implications of Aghion et al. (2010)'s model of a negative correlation between trust and the demand for government regulation
Labour Market Policies and Outcomes in the Enlarged EU
No full textWe document and compare labor market institutions, policies and outcomes in the EU member countries, for the period between 1999 and 2006. Higher employment rates are in general positively associated with measures of policy generosity, especially with the use of Active Labor Market Policies, and negatively with institutions and policies which induce rigidity in the labor market. We also find evidence that the relation between ALMP and employment levels is non-monotonic and that it is conditional on the informal institutions prevailing in different countries
How much (a)symmetry in Europe? Evidence from industrial sectors
No full textTo what extent do European countries differ with respect to the sources of cyclical fluctuations of industrial output? We look at output data disaggregated by industry for 11 European countries, and on the basis of a cointegrated vector autoregression model we examine the correlation of output innovations at the industry and country levels. We also discuss to what extent output innovations can be considered 'symmetric' or 'asymmetric'. Our results point to the fact that, on average, more variance of output innovations is explained at the country, rather than the industry level. We also find that the importance of asymmetric disturbances is quite varied among the 11 countries, and we identify a 'core' of countries with a higher degree of symmetry. © 1995
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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