OPTIMThe conservative central banker has come under attack recently. Explicitly modeling the interaction of a trade union with monetary policy, it has been argued that the standard solution to the inflationary bias in monetary policy might actually be welfare reducing if the trade union has an...

Understanding EMU : the role of labour market institutions -- The other road to Maastricht : currency blocs, wage moderation, and social conflict -- The perils of coordination : wages and labour relations from the European Monetary System to EMU -- Diversity without unity : labour unions and...

The "conservative central banker" has come under attack recently. Explicitly modeling the interaction of a trade union with monetary policy, it has been argued that the standard solution to the inflationary bias in monetary policy might actually be welfare reducing if the trade union has an...

Recent literature on the interactions between labor unions and monetary institutions features either a supply or a demand channel of monetary policy, but not both. This leads to two opposing views about the effects of central bank conservativeness. We evaluate the relative merits of those...

Existing literature on the strategic interaction between the central bank (CR) and unions assumes that firms face perfect competition on product markets and that inflation is chosen directly by the monetary authority. Although these simplifications have the virtue of making complex strategic...

In the recent economic literature the independence of the central bank is often considered to be one of the most effective guarantees to achieve price stability. A strong theoretical basis of this proposition is that the monetary policy delegation given to an independent central bank is an...