The paper constructs a simple macroeconomic model that contains a labor market in which insiders have power in wage negotiations. Wage and employment decisions are assumed to be made before business conditions are known; thus these decisions depend on both the hiring costs and expected dismissal...

The material within these pages shows that Barbados, a Caribbean country with just over a quarter of a million people, embodies many of the classic vulnerabilities of an island with a small open economy, yet aspires to developed-country status, and is already well advanced on the road to...