Labour markets, wage indexation and exchange rate policy

Sisällysluettelo:
Acknowledgements 5
1 Introduction 9
2 Wage Indexation and Foreign Exchange Intervention
in an Open Economy: the Gray-Fischer Approach 14
2.1 Introduction 14
2.2 The labour market model 15
2.2.1 Comments on the Gray-Fischer labour market model 16
2.3 A small open economy subject to wage rigidity
and foreign exchange intervention 21
2.3.1 Exchange rate expectations 26
2.3.2 Full information output 28
2.3.3 Actual real wages and output 28
2.3.4 Optimal wage indexation and foreign exchange intervention
from the
point of view of macroeconomic stability 29
2.3.5 Optimality of a single instrument 34
2.3.5.1 Optimal wage indexation under a given exchange rate regime
34
2.3.4.2 Optimal degree of intervention given the degree of wage
indexation 37
2.4 Introducing terms-of-trade changes 39
2.5 Wage rigidity, foreign exchange intervention and the degree of
openness 45
2.5.1 A two-sector economy with wage indexation and foreign
exchange intervention 46
2.5.2 Optimal degree of wage
indexation and
foreign exchange intervention and openness 52
2.5.3 Optimality of a single instrument 62
2.5.3.1 Optimal wage indexation under a given exchange rate regime
62
2.5.3.2 Optimal degree of intervention given the degree of wage
indexation 67
2.6 Summary of chapter two and discussion 70
3 Bargaining, Trade Unions and Wage Formation in an Open Economy 78
3.1 Introduction 78
3.2 Bargaining between trade unions and firms 78
3.3 Indexed contract wages: an operationalization
of the asymmetric Nash bargaining models 86
Appendix to chapter three 104
4 Exchange Rate Variability and Wage Formation 106
4.1 Introduction 106
4.2 A marcomodel of a small open economy with union-firm wage
bargaining 108
4.3 Steady state effects of indexation and foreign exchange
intervention 115
4.3.1 Steady state output under fixed and flexible exchange rates
116
4.3.1.1 Fixed exchange rates 117
4.3.1.2 Flexible exchange rates 119
4.3.2 Structural features of the labour markets 122
4.3.3 Variability
versus level; policy makers' objectives and
optimality
of a single instrument 125
5 Summary and Discussion 143
References 154

Doctoral dissertation to be presented, by permission of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Helsinki, for public examination in Auditorium III, Porthania, Hallituskatu 11-13, on March 27, 1992, at noon.