Divergent macro-economic developments within a currency area can lead to undesired distortions. That is why in the Eurozone much attention was drawn to the homogeneity of the currency area. However, at the beginning the Eurozone seemed to be too heterogeneous for a common currency. So many hopes...

In this paper Markus Knell studies the determinants of unemployment in a two-country- model, where real wages are the outcome of the strategic interaction between various institutional players (firms, unions, central banks). He shows that: (i) the results derived in the recent literature on this...