This paper examines the effect of monopolistic labour unions' behavior on governments' incentives to undertake labour market reform, inside and outside a symmetric and an asymmetric monetary union (MU). Incentives for reform are increased inside the MU when governments and labour unions move...

Post-apartheid South Africa is facing three major economic problems: (1) slack economic growth, (2) high and growing unemployment and (3) among the world's highest income inequality and poverty indices. South Africa is currently caught in a macro-economic straight-jacket of tight monetary,...

We present strong empirical evidence favoring the role of effective demand in the US economy, in the spirit of Keynes and Kalecki. Our inference comes from a statistically well-specified VAR model constructed on a quarterly basis from 1980 to 2008. US output is our variable of interest, and it...

The need for macroprudential policy to “lean against the wind” of credit cycles at the aim of financial and hence macroeconomic stability is a common belief. Which design of macroprudential policy might attain the greatest stability for the economy is still an open debate. This paper builds...

Sufficiently flexible labour markets are considered an important precondition for countries to benefit from membership in the monetary union. Economic policy coordination within the European Community is extensive and includes issues related to labour market structures. In this paper we study...