The chapter first introduces Tarantelli’s thought on the role of labour economics and social pacts. The implementation of his proposals for a social pact in Italy is then discussed and compared to similar experiences in Europe. Attention is finally devoted to developing a theory of social...

The chapter presents a model, where the union is interested in the level of wages, employment and the level of public expenditure. Social pacts are shown not only to lead to a superior macroeconomic performance, but to be also acceptable by unions. The key to their acceptability lies in the...

This paper develops a simple New Keynesian Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model with rule-of-thumb consumers and external habits. Our theoretical model has a closed-form solution which allows the analytical derivation of its dynamical and stability properties. These properties are...

Social pacts, while improving macroeconomic performance, usually impose costs on unions. To facilitate the formation of such pacts, various substitutes can operate, such as the payment of transfers or, to some extent, the conservativeness of the government, union’s inflation aversion or...

This paper studies corporatism as the outcome of bargaining between the government and a representative labor union. We show that if negotiations between these two parties only relate to macroeconomic stabilization, corporatism can never be beneficial to both parties. As corporatist policies are...

This paper outlines the evolution of the theory of economic policy from the classical contributions of Frisch, Hansen, Tinbergen and Theil to situations of strategic interaction. Andrew Hughes Hallett has taken an active and relevant part in this evolution, having contributed to both the...

We challenge the widely held belief that New-Keynesian models cannot predict optimal positive in‡ ations. We finnd that these are justified by the Phelps argument. This mainly happens because we also consider distortionary expects of public transfers. Our predictions are broadly consistent...

By using the recent Gertler and Kiyotaki's (2010) setup, this paper explores the interaction between real distortions stemming from the labor market institutions and financial shocks. We find that neither labor market imperfections nor fiscal institutions determining tax wedges have an impact on...

We challenge the widely held belief that New Keynesian models cannot predict an optimal positive inflation rate. In fact we find that even for the US economy, characterized by relatively small government size, optimal trend inflation is justified by the Phelps argument that the inflation tax...

In this paper we investigate the roots, nature and consequences of the exit strategies that have already been implemented or are likely to be implemented in the EMU countries after the financial and economic crisis. We show that there is a deflationary bias in the current institutional...