International product market integration enhances both export possibilities through easier access to foreign markets, but also the import threat arising from foreign firms penetrating into the domestic market. These mechanisms affect wage formation and employment creation through many channels...

The interaction between a common monetary policy targeting inflation and decentralized fiscal policies aiming at output stability is considered in a setting taking into account interdependencies between countries running via trade links and the common monetary policy. The setting is sufficiently...

International integration strengthening intra-industrial trade may have important implications for employment, wages and inequality. The reason is that product market integration enhances export possibilities through easier access to foreign markets, but also import threats arising from foreign...

How does a monetary union work when labour markets are heterogeneous? Since shocks are transmitted via both trade links and the common monetary policy and propagated via labour market responses, it follows that labour market institutions may have not only national but also union-wide...

The incentive to renege on a commitment to a fixed exchange rate is shown to be state contingent. A fixed exchange rate policy is not viable under `unusual' circumstances, and the incentive to violate the commitment is larger in the case of contractionary shocks than in the case of expansionary...

Floating exchange rates display substantial short-run volatility causing a nontrivial information problem in disentangling temporary from permanent changes. Although agents observe current market signals they are imperfectly informed about the future, but they accumulate information and learn...

The consequences of business cycle contingencies in unemployment insurance systems are considered in a search-matching model allowing for shifts between "good" and "bad" states of nature. We show that not only is there an insurance argument for such contingencies, but also an incentive argument....

Approaching demographic shifts are raising concerns about fiscal sustainability in most OECD countries. A widespread view based on the tax-smoothing idea is that a prior consolidation of public finances is required to cope with the predicted trend deterioration in the primary budget balance....

The potential distortions of job-search incentives caused by unemployment benefits and their financing are well known. However, a benefit-tax scheme also provides insurance having direct utility effects as well as indirect effects on risk taking. The latter mitigates or may even dominate...

The role of social background for educational choices and outcomes is considered in an overlapping generations setting. It is shown that the impediments for education created by social factors are similar to a market imperfection, and publicly provided education may lead to a Pareto improvement....