consumers in the green electricity market in finland abstract green electricity i e electricity produced from environmentally less harmful sources and marketed as such has been available to finnish households since 1998 but the demand for it has remained low in this paper we discuss the barriers identified by consumers to purchasing green electricity and contrast these with the interpretation energy sector actors give to consumer passivity the empirical material consists of thematic interviews energy policy actors often assume that consumers passivity signifies their lack of interest or low environmental consciousness this results partly from the failure to differentiate between the roles of consumer and citizen the interpretation the energy sector actors give to consumer passivity and the role they assign to consumers affect the direction of green electricity policy we argue that consumers need more information on both the environmental impact of different electricity products and in particular about the electricity supply and electricity contracts in a liberalised electricity market if they are to become active in the market

a stochastic dea study of hotel efficiency this current study is the first to apply stochastic data envelopment analysis sdea approach to assess the efficiency of hotels the determinants of hotel efficiency were also investigated employing the tobit regression model approach the sdea results show that the sdea efficiency measures are higher than the deterministic ones and the greater the stochastic variability of outputs the closer the envelope moves successively to any given observation and the efficiency score approaches one the optimal solution to sdea involves the presence of some buffer slack of all outputs in applications involving practice production situation such buffer slack can be interpreted as the firms need to hold inventory excess capacity and organizational slack against stochastic uncertainty of market environment our results also indicate that resort hotels achieve better efficiency than those in metropolitan areas and operating as part of a chain is not the main determinant of the efficiency of international touri

some models for estimating technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis in management contexts mathematical programming is usually used to evaluate a collection of possible alternative courses of action en route to selecting one which is best in this capacity mathematical programming serves as a planning aid to management data envelopment analysis reverses this role and employs mathematical programming to obtain ex post facto evaluations of the relative efficiency of management accomplishments however they may have been planned or executed mathematical programming is thereby extended for use as a tool for control and evaluation of past accomplishments as well as a tool to aid in planning future activities the ccr ratio form introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes as part of their data envelopment analysis approach comprehends both technical and scale inefficiencies via the optimal value of the ratio form as obtained directly from the data without requiring a priori specification of weights and or explicit delineation of assumed functional forms of relations between inputs and outputs a separation into technical and scale efficiencies is accomplished by the methods developed in this paper without altering the latter conditions for use of dea directly on observational data technical inefficiencies are identified with failures to achieve best possible output levels and or usage of excessive amounts of inputs methods for identifying and correcting the magnitudes of these inefficiencies as supplied in prior work are illustrated in the present paper a new separate variable is introduced which makes it possible to determine whether operations were conducted in regions of increasing constant or decreasing returns to scale in multiple input and multiple output situations the results are discussed and related not only to classical single output economics but also to more modern versions of economics which are identified with contestable market theories

contract farmer and poultry farm efficiency in bangladesh a data envelopment analysis the objective of this article is to determine the efficiency of the poultry farm in bangladesh and to assess the influence of contract farming system using a data envelopment analysis seventy five commercial poultry farms 25 and 50 independent and contract farms respectively were randomly selected the results reveal that efficiency scores vary across sample farms to explain some of these variations the efficiency scores were regressed on some human capital variables and farming system using a tobit model the study also estimates elasticities to provide the information on the magnitude of the influence of variables on technical efficiency te allocative efficiency ae and economic efficiency ee the results show that the contracting system is positively and significantly related to the farm s te ae and ee this is expected because under contractual agreement in order to obtain sufficient supplies of the right quality of poultry meat at the right time the company provides technical know how

exchange rate policy and wage formation in an economy with many trade unions abstract exchange rate policy may confront governments with an important credibility problem while there is usually a long run gain from abstaining from devaluations there may also be a short run benefit from a devaluation this short run benefit may cause expectations of future devaluations resulting in wage and price rises that make the expectations self fulfilling this issue is analysed within a model with many trade unions if the government pursues a non devaluation policy the trade unions gain from voluntary wage restraint however if the non devaluation policy isn t credible the cooperation on wage restraint may break down

exchange rate policy wage formation and credibility abstract since the collapse of the bretton woods system some european countries have pursued discretionary exchange rate policies in order to maintain or enhance the international competitiveness of the traded goods sector these countries which typically feature centralized wage setting have also tended to experience high nominal wage increases the overall outcome may be described as a devaluation wage spiral this paper applies two models of repeated games to analyze the strategic interaction between an exchange rate setting policy maker and a wage setting trade union it is shown how a devaluation wage spiral may result from a conflict of interest over the real wage it is also shown how reputational forces may provide a way out of the devaluation wage spiral

mixed signals central bank independence coordinated wage bargaining and european monetary union plans for the european monetary union emu are based on the conventional postulate that increasing the independence of the central bank can reduce inflation without any real economic effects however the theoretical and empirical bases for this claim rest on models of the economy that make unrealistic information assumptions and omit institutional variables other than the central bank when signaling problems between the central bank and other actors in the political economy are considered we find that the character of wage bargaining conditions the impact of central bank independence by rendering the signals between the bank and the bargainers more or less effective greater central bank independence can reduce inflation without major employment effects where bargaining is coordinated but it can bring higher levels of unemployment where bargaining is less coordinated thus currency unions like the emu may require higher levels of unemployment to control inflation than their proponents envisage they will have costs as well as benefits and these will be unevenly distributed among and within the member nations depending on the changes they induce in the status of the bank and of wage coordination

macroeconomic performance and collective bargaining an international perspective this paper critically reviews the research on how collective bargaining systems influence macroeconomic performance in industrialized countries the review considers effects of bargaining level coordination and corporatist institutional arrangements key empirical results turn out to be quite fragile and much of the paper explores issues of measurement and specification that account for the fragility the paper concludes that complementarities between key institutions and between institutions and the economic environment may be more important for macroeconomic performance than the effects of individual institutions and it suggests research strategies

exchange rate regime preferences of the international sector firm level evidence abstract this paper argues that fixed exchange rate regimes are preferred by the international sector only if they are adopted in economies endowed with anti inflationary policy making institutions i e independent central banks cross national firm level data gives strong support to this claim

how will emu affect inflation and unemployment in europe this paper explores how european monetary union will change the wage setting behavior of national labor unions we derive the impact of national inflation aversion and labor militancy on the performance of national labor markets under different monetary arrangements a common central bank raises inflation and unemployment if it acts as conservatively as national central banks however unemployment falls in countries that previously tied their monetary policy to the bundesbank we also examine the composition of emu and the influence of national labor market legislation jel classification e24 f02 f33

public goods and private interests understanding non residential demand for green power this article presents the results of the first large scale mail survey of non residential green power customers in the united states the survey explored the motivations attitudes and experiences of 464 business non profit and public sectorcustomers that have voluntarily opted to purchase and frequently pay a premium for renewable electricity results of this study should be of value to marketers interested in targeting these customer segments to policymakers interested in fostering and understanding non residential demand for green power and to academics pondering the motivations for firms to engage in such voluntary environmental initiatives

monetary institutions monopolistic competition unionized labor markets and economic performance recent literature on the interactions between labor unions and monetary institutions features either a supply or a demand channel of monetary policy but not both this leads to two opposing views about the effects of central bank conservativeness we evaluate the relative merits of those conflicting views by developing a unified framework we find that i the effect of conservativeness on employment depends on unions relative aversion to unemployment versus inflation and ii for plausible values of this relative aversion and more than one union social welfare is maximized under a highly conservative central bank we also evaluate the effects of centralization of wage bargaining and product market competition on unemployment and inflation

classifying exchange rate regimes deeds vs words abstract most of the empirical literature on exchange rate regimes uses the imf de jure classification based on the regime announced by the governments despite the recognized inconsistencies between reported and actual policies in many cases to address this problem we construct a de facto classification based on data on exchange rates and international reserves from all imf reporting countries over the period 1974 2000 which we believe provides a meaningful alternative for future empirical work on the topic the classification sheds new light on several stylized facts previously reported in the literature in particular we find that the de facto pegs have remained stable throughout the last decade although an increasing number of them shy away from an explicit commitment to a fixed regime hidden pegs we confirm the hollowing out hypothesis but show that it does not apply to countries with limited access to capital markets we also find that pure floats are associated with only relatively minor nominal exchange rate volatility and that the recent increase in the number of de jure floats goes hand in hand with an increase in the number of de facto dirty floats fear of floating

cost structure and productivity growth of the taiwanese international tourist hotels abstract this study investigates the cost structure and economic implications of the taiwanese international tourist hotel industry a multi product translog cost function with three inputs and three outputs is estimated using seemingly unrelated regression estimation and three stage least squares a balanced panel dataset consisting of 47 international tourist hotels in taiwan over the period 1997 2001 was obtained from taiwanese tourism bureau and used to estimate the cost function the results show that both scale and scope economies exist in the taiwanese international tourist hotel industry in addition productivity growth is positive over the study period managerial and policy implications for the taiwanese international tourist hotel industry are also discussed

multiple wage bargaining systems in the single european currency area little attention in the emu literature has been paid to the interaction between central bank monetary rules and systems of collective wage bargaining analytically and empirically coordinated wage bargaining systems respond with real wage restraint to non accommodating monetary policy since wage determination is dominated by collective bargaining in all the emu member states and wage coordination within the member states has grown since 1980 this is a topic of potential importance in particular the replacement of the bundesbank directly targeting german inflation by an ecb targeting european inflation has removed a major institutional support of wage restraint in germany the consequences of this for emu are worked out under two scenarios that inflation expectations will be generated by ecb monetary policy and that they will reflect german inflation outcomes possible institutional developments are discussed including government union bargains the bundesbank has also played a major role in maintaining fiscal rectitude by targeting excess fiscal deficits in germany again its replacement by the ecb targeting if at all european rather than german fiscal policy loosens fiscal constraints for underlying structural reasons therefore it is possible that germany and other emu countries will move to a period of fiscal activism with wage restraint and low inflation purchased through social contract negotiations

stabilisation policy targets and unemployment in imperfectly competitive economies this paper argues that the rate of equilibrium unemployment depends on the objectives of the central bank in a model where the central bank uses monetary policy to stabilise the economy we show that unemployment and inflation will be lower with an inflation target than with targets for output money or nominal gdp the intuition for this is that the elasticities of demand in both the product and the labour markets are greater when there is an inflation target we show that this leads to a lower mark up of price over marginal cost and makes wages more sensitive to unemployment

labour markets and monetary union a strategic analysis this paper shows that the effects of a monetary union depend on several labour market features in particular the switch from national monetary policies to a common monetary policy usually affects both inflation and unemployment even when all structural parameters of the economy and of unions and policymakers preferences remain the same the benchmark case of a monetary union between identical countries suggests that the switch to a monetary union is likely to make labour unions more aggressive increasing unemployment qualifications to this result are provided under alternative institutional scenarios like cross country asymmetries pre union erm membership and wage leadership

beyond ecolabels what green marketing can learn from conventional marketing ecolabels have emerged as one of the main tools of green marketing although a great deal of effort has been invested in making them more effective and efficient the market share of ecolabelled products is still low partly because they have been addressed mainly to green consumers in a theoretical exposition of marketing theory we find that green marketing could learn from conventional marketing in discovering other means than labelling to promote green products examples include addressing a wider range of consumers working with the positioning strategies of price place and promotion and actively engaging in market creation

the role of shocks and institutions in the rise of european unemployment the aggregate evidence two key facts about european unemployment must be explained the rise in unemployment since the 1960s and the heterogeneity of individual country experiences while adverse shocks can potentially explain much of the rise in unemployment there is insufficient heterogeneity in these shocks to explain cross country differences alternatively while explanations focusing on labour market institutions explain current heterogeneity well many of these institutions pre date the rise in unemployment based on a panel of institutions and shocks for 20 oecd nations since 1960 we find that the interaction between shocks and institutions is crucial to explaining both stylised facts

us consumers willingness to pay for green electricity abstract we analyze us consumers demand for environmental attributes of deregulated residential electricity services using results from a survey designed to elicit consumers willingness to pay for such attributes and using results from a hedonic analysis of actual price premiums charged for green electricity in several deregulated markets survey results suggest that many population segments are willing to pay for decreased air emissions even if there is no alteration in fuel source furthermore several groups are willing to pay significantly more when emissions reductions stem from increased reliance upon renewable fuels the hedonic analysis suggests that several product features not considered in the survey help explain real price premiums including fuel mix from newly created renewable generation capacity green e certification brand name and state of offer while survey and hedonic results are not easily compared due to limitations of the survey both point to similar values for key environmental attributes though the survey results are likely to overstate actual willingness to pay in sum the results suggest that consumer driven purchases can in part support the future of renewable generation capacity in the united states though reliance upon other policy alternatives may be needed if energy prices spike

relative prices in monetary union and floating we analyse a small open economy with a tradable and a sheltered sector if the unions that operate in each sector coordinate their wage demands sectorwise the choice of monetary regime floating cum inflation target vs emu may affect the relative wages and prices of the economy we show that emu results in lower prices for tradable goods and lower real wages in the traded sector while opposite results hold for sheltered sector prices and wages thus if large unions behave strategically the choice of monetary regime has far reaching structural implications

fiscal activism under inflation targeting and non atomistic wage setting this paper presents a game between a fiscal authority an independent central bank and non atomistic wage setters the effects of fiscal activism and inflation targeting on labour market outcomes are analysed the results suggest that inflation targeting provides incentive for wage restraint moreover real wages are increasing in the degree of fiscal activism as wage setters exploit the response of a fiscal authority seeking to promote employment numerical results suggest that the benefits of targeting inflation are larger when the government pursues an activist policy and therefore that there is some substitutability between fiscal and monetary rules

economic hardship and policy preferences in the eurozone periphery evidence from spain what is the impact of economic suffering on support for euro membership and austerity policies in the eurozone periphery this article uses original public opinion and firm surveys conducted in spain in the midst of the great recession to describe the structure of preferences toward the euro as a common currency and austerity policies focusing on the specific impact of crisis exposure we find that in spite of the depth and the duration of the economic crisis support for spain s membership in the eurozone is strong however while economic suffering divides the electorate on support for the euro and austerity it does not do so for firms surprisingly individuals who have suffered due to the crisis in terms of higher income loss are more skeptical of tax and spend programs but are more critical of the euro moreover individuals who are skeptical of the euro and austerity are demographically distinct groups of people one implication of our joint individual and firm level findings is that a coalition t

adoption of green electricity by german small and medium sized enterprises smes a qualitative analysis abstract the german government aims at generating 80 percent of the country s electricity from renewable sources by 2050 in the german liberalized electricity market customers can support this target by purchasing green electricity ge i e electricity produced from renewable energy sources yet the demand for ge has remained low among small and medium sized enterprises smes which represent the country s biggest electricity customer group based on a review of the relevant literature this article investigates factors that determine smes decisions whether to adopt ge for this purpose thematic interviews with ge providers and representatives of smes are performed and qualitatively analyzed the results of the interview analysis form the basis for a conceptual framework that reflects the ge adoption decisions of german smes and lay the groundwork for future analysis in this area

energy practices among small and medium sized tourism enterprises a case of misdirected effort abstract discussion of sustainable tourism has become dominated by the issue of climate change as a major source of emissions the tourism sector has a vital role to play in efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change within the current body of knowledge and among major policy discourses the prevailing paradigm has been to encourage action reduced emissions will follow innovations in managerial practices and the uptake of the latest most resource efficient technologies this paper examines energy practices among small and medium sized tourism enterprises smtes reporting empirical research conducted as part of a five year programme although energy was a significant cost of production it did not feature prominently in the business administration of most smtes a major knowledge gap was exposed regarding how energy was consumed and administered by individual businesses the paper argues for a major shift in thinking away from the number of actions as the key success criterion action alone is no guarantee of emissions reductions in a sector where growth is the dominant imperative instead a crucial reorientation towards stimulating higher levels of energy literacy among smtes is necessary in parallel to rebalancing of attention towards energy generation

green energy market development in germany effective public policy and emerging customer demand this paper reviews the development of renewable energy in germany from 1973 to 2003 it investigates the relative importance of energy policy and green power marketing in shaping the renewable energy market more than a decade of consistent policy support for renewables under the feed in law streg and its successor eeg has been an important driver for increasing renewable electricity generation to date putting the country in a better position than most of its peers when it comes to achieving european union targets for renewable energy green power marketing driven by customer demand on the other hand is growing but has had limited measurable impact so far we discuss potential intangible benefits of green power marketing and scenarios for future market development the paper concludes with lessons that can be learned from the german case for policy design and market development in other countries

stuck between a roc and a hard place barriers to the take up of green energy in the uk abstract this paper examines the uk mechanisms for ensuring future investment in renewable energy through consumer adoption of green energy tariffs and the renewable obligation certificate roc system using a national survey and focus groups the stated willingness by uk customers to pay a premium for renewable or green energy and actual take up of such tariffs is assessed substantial differences between willingness to pay for and the adoption of green energy tariffs are reported this disparity is linked to a range of factors including consumer confusion lack of supply complexities of constructing green source tariffs under the roc system and a lack of customer trust it is concluded that the re definition of the green energy market in favour of green source tariffs greater direct compliance with the renewable obligation by addressing supply constraints and efforts in providing clearer information and choices for consumers via a compulsory green energy accreditation scheme are required if willing consumers are to contribute to investment in renewable energy

centralised wage setting inflation contracts and the optimal choice of central banker the paper examines the appropriate design of central banking institutions in an economy in which the nominal wage is set by an inflation averse monopoly union as a positive mark up over its market clearing value the analysis considers both the optimal choice of central banker and the potential role for a linear inflation contract the optimal set of arrangements is a central banker who attaches less significance to inflation than does society combined with an inflation contract where the value of the contract parameter is related to the union s degree of inflationaversion following the important contribution of rogoff 1985 the appointment of a conservative central banker has been widely accepted as a potential albeit partial solution to the time inconsistency problem associated with discretionary policy making in placing a greater weight on inflation than does the government and society as a whole in the setting of monetary policy the central bank s temptation to create inflation surprises is reduced this then leads to a lower inflation rate in equilibrium than would otherwise prevail whilst in rogoff s stochastic framework this reduction in the inflationary bias has to be weighed against an increase in output variability the appropriate choice of central banker ensures a net improvement in welfare an important feature of rogoff s model is the assumption of an atomistic labour market in which nominal wages embodied in single period contracts reflect interaction between agents who hold no market power such a representation of the labour market also characterises most subsequent extensions of rogoff s analysis e g lohmann 1992 and waller 1992 however a number of recent papers in considering the time inconsistency issue have employed the assumption of unionised wage setting assuming either an allencompassing monopoly union or alternatively a number of individual unions each of which has a non negligible impact on macroeconomic variables examples include agell and ysander 1993 bleaney 1996 cubitt 1992 1995 horn and persson 1988 hutchison and walsh 1998 and skott 1997 these contributions have examined the implications of the assumed labour market imperfection from a variety of perspectives but only those of bleaney and skott directly consider its consequences for the appropriate specification of central bank objectives in what follows we explore the significance of unionised wage setting for

non atomistic wage setters and monetary policy in a new keynesian framework this paper extends an otherwise standard new keynesian nk model to allow for the presence of large wage setters building on monetary models from an earlier generation i contribute to the nk literature by adding some new insight it is shown that once the presence of large wage setters is taken into account the degree of wage setting centralization and the aggressiveness of the central bank in stabilizing inflation jointly affect steady state employment because of this interaction the benefits associated with inflation stabilization increase in the centralization of the wage bargaining process

wage bargaining and nominal rigidities abstract delays in wage negotiations do not necessarily mean work stoppage production can continue under the terms of the old contract while the parties are bargaining holdout this holdout option is included in a strategic bargaining game in addition to strike and lock out threats integrating the bargaining model in a standard macroeconomic framework it turns out that holdout threats will prevail under certain circumstances in this case wages will be rigid in nominal terms so that an increase in aggregate nominal demand increases aggregate output

wage setting institutions and pay inequality in advanced industrial societies the distribution of pay differs significantly across countries and over time among advanced industrial societies in this paper institutional and political determinants of pay inequality are studied in sixteen countries from 1980 to 1992 the most important factor in explaining pay dispersion is the level of wage setting i e whether wages are set at the level of the individual the plant the industry or the entire private sector the impact of centralization is the same whether centralization occurs via collective bargaining or via government involvement in private sector wage setting the concentration of unions and the share of the labor force covered by collective bargaining agreements also matter after controlling for wage setting institutions other variables such as the governing coalition the size of government international openness and the supply of highly educated workers have little impact economic political and norm based explanations for the association of centralization with egalitarian outcomes are discussed

the case for a populist central banker abstract we present a general equilibrium optimizing model in which we study the joint effects of centralization of wage setting and central bank conservatism on economic performance several striking conclusions emerge in relatively centralized labor markets employment and output are decreasing and inflation is intially increasing and then decreasing in the degree of central bank conservatism a radical populist central banker who cares not at all about inflation alternatively who is not conservative maximizes social welfare economic performance is not u shaped in the degree of centralization of the labor market in contrast to conventional wisdom

the nonneutrality of monetary policy with large price or wage setters monetary rules matter for the equilibrium rate of employment when the number of price wage setters is small even when assuming rational expectations complete information central bank precommitment and absence of nominal rigidities if the central bank is nonaccommodating sufficiently large unions bargaining independently have an incentive to moderate sectoral money wages and thereby expected real wages the result is an increase in the real money supply and hence higher demand and employment this does not hold with accommodating monetary policy since unions wage decisions cannot then affect the real money supply a similar argument holds for large monopolistically competitive price setters

monetary regimes and the co ordination of wage setting abstract a recent literature argues that a strict monetary regime may reduce equilibrium unemployment by disciplining wage setters as wage setters abstain from raising wages to avoid a monetary contraction however in this literature the wage setters are assumed not to co ordinate their wage setting the present paper argues that precisely because a strict monetary regime may discipline the unco ordinated wage setting thus lowering unemployment in the unco ordinated outcome it also reduces wage setters incentives to co ordinate it is shown that an accommodating monetary regime may reduce equilibrium unemployment via the strengthening of the wage setters incentives to co ordinate

current challenges of germany s energy transition project and competing strategies of challengers and incumbents the case of direct marketing of electricity from renewable energy sources electricity generated by renewable energies res e already accounts for 25 of germany s electricity supply this has led to recent discussions for a better market integration of res e the paper examines how competing actors and their ideas on market integration developed new services for direct marketing according to their respective origins and tried to shape the regulatory framework the paper analyses this process and explains the current shape of the field of direct marketing medium sized structured actors who favoured res e integration via the conventional wholesale power markets and who formed early close coalitions with res e power producers at the same time have been most successful in terms of market shares moreover they have been very successful for different reasons in building up coalitions with governance units and influencing the field rules and routines based on those findings the paper will conclude with some policy advices for the future adjustment of the current regulative frameworks as long as there is no evidence of how res e can be integrated most effectively and efficiently policies should maintain a competition between different direct marketing strategies to find out which strategies serve the best in terms of achieving a successful energy transition

strategic planning of optimal resource allocation in response to global financial crisis a study of international tourist hotels this study is principally designed to examine the changes in the efficiency effective resource allocation and future operation strategies of taiwan s international tourist hotel in global economic downturn at first we set up critical input and output factors and construct an assessment model using data envelopment analysis dea for analysis of relative efficiency further we apply an allocative efficiency model for additional considerations of each input cost and analyse proper and effective resource allocation finally there are significant changes in overall efficiency of international tourist hotels under global financial crisis we can also reach an effective allocation of the overall resources in such cases lowering cost has become a key issue for sustainable operation of international tourist hotel finally the greatest contribution of this study is to further classify the competitiveness and optimal cost allocation of taiwan s international tourist hotels into seven categories based on the

wage setting under different monetary regimes in an economy with large wage setters like industry unions the monetary regime affects the trade off between consumer real wages and employment and profits faced by the wage setters this paper shows that an exchange rate target including participation in a monetary union is likely to involve lower wages in the traded sector and higher wages in the non traded sector than does a price target an exchange rate target also involves higher prices on non traded goods relative to on traded goods overall welfare is likely to be higher under a price target

central bank independence centralization of wage bargaining inflation and unemployment theory and some evidence abstract this paper proposes a conceptual framework to investigate the effects of central bank independence of the degree of centralization of wage bargaining and of the interaction between those institutional variables on real wages unemployment and inflation in a framework in which unions are averse to inflation this aversion moderates union s wage demands as they attempt to induce the central bank to inflate at a lower rate an increase in the degree of centralization of wage bargaining a decrease in the number of unions triggers two opposite effects on real wages unemployment and inflation it reduces the substitutability between the labor of different unions and therefore the degree of effective competition between them this reduced competition effect raises real wages unemployment and inflation but the decrease in the number of unions also strengthens the moderating effect of inflationary fears on the real wage demands of each union this strategic effect lowers real wages unemployment and inflation for sufficiently inflation averse unions the interaction between those two effects produces a calmfors driffill type relation between real wages and centralization the paper analyzes the effects of central bank independence on the position and the shape of this relation as well as on inflation and unemployment the paper features two mechanisms one of which is novel through which monetary institutions have real effects the model implies that if there is a single union social welfare is maximized when the central bank attaches a zero weight to inflation but when the number of unions is larger than one this result is no longer true in general empirical evaluation of some of the theoretical implications using data from 19 developed economies is for the most part supportive of those implications

the modern history of exchange rate arrangements a reinterpretation we develop a novel system of reclassifying historical exchange rate regimes one key difference between our study and previous classifications is that we employ monthly data on market determined parallel exchange rates going back to 1946 for 153 countries our approach differs from the imf official classification which we show to be only a little better than random it also differs radically from all previous attempts at historical reclassification our classification points to a rethinking of economic performance under alternative exchange rate regimes indeed the breakup of bretton woods had less impact on exchange rate regimes than is popularly believed