This highly topical book examines the development and future prospects for economic and monetary union in Europe. European Monetary Integration examines the background to economic and monetary union from a historical perspective that distinguishes between national and supranational currency...

This paper analyses recent trends in wage bargaining institutions in Europe to explain the gradual deterioration in the bargaining position of trade unions. It appears that the integration of European economies is an important factor. This raises the question whether trade unions will respond by...

Despite improving labour market conditions in recent years, a number of EMU countries still suffer from high and persistent unemployment. It could therefore be expected that labour market reform would be given a prominent position on the political agenda. The new constraints associated with the...

This paper investigates the impact of international trade on wage dispersion in a small open economy, Belgium. It is one of the few to: (i) use detailed, matched employer-employee data to compute industry wage premia and disaggregated industry-level panel data to examine the impact of changes in...

In the last decades, international trade has increased between industrialised countries and between high- and low-wage countries. This important change has raised questions on how international trade affects the labour market. In this spirit, this paper aims to investigate the impact of...

The rarity with which firms reduce nominal wages has been frequently observed, even in the face of considerable negative economic shocks. This paper uses a unique survey of fourteen European countries to ask firms directly about the incidence of wage cuts and to assess the relevance of a range...

Although workers' nominal wages are seldom cut, firms have multiple options available if they require adjustments in their wage bills. We broaden the analysis of relative (in)flexibility in labour costs by investigating the use of other margins of labour cost adjustment at the firm level beyond...

This paper evaluates the extent of downward nominal and real wage rigidity for differentcategories of workers and firms using the methodology developed by the International WageFlexibility Project (IWFP). The analysis is based on an administrative data set on individualearnings, covering...