Fiscal Policy in a Monetary Union Under Alternative Labour-Market Structures

Moise Sidiropoulos and Eleftherios Spyromitros

Working Papers of BETA from Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg

Abstract: This paper examines the welfare and stabilisation implications of alterna- tive fiscal decision rules in a monetary union with a common monetary policy, such as the European Monetary Union (EMU). We develop a two-country model under monetary union in presnece of asymmetries. Fiscal policies are assumed alternatively non-cooperative (decentralised) and cooperative (centralised) and labour markets are characterised by decentralised and centralised wage setting. The central issue of the paper is the design of the appropriate fiscal policy rule by comparing and evaluating the performance of alternative arrangements to distribute the power over fiscal authorities between the centre of the union and the individual members of the union. The main result of this paper reveals that a decentralized fiscal policy rule, where the member states conduct independent fiscal policies, with centralised wage setting in labour markets of monetary union members is the appropriate institutional design. This institutional arrangement would improve the social welfare and stabilize better than others the idiosyncratic shocks hitting the economies of the monetary union members.

Keywords: Policy-mix; EMU; labor market institutions. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E52 E58 E63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-eec, nep-mac and nep-mon
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://beta.u-strasbg.fr/WP/2006/2006-25.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2006-25

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers of BETA from Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).