The creation of a monetary union alters the incentives private agents face when bargaining their wage contracts. The model presented here introduces country specific real shocks to the Gray (1976) optimal wage indexation framework for a continuum of unions. It is assumed that the unions engage...

The paper evaluates the costs and benefits of a single currency area within a unified framework. Conventionally, it is argued that a single currency area carries a welfare loss owing to the sacrifice of exchange rate adjustment in the presence of country-specific shocks. But in 1973 Mundell...

This book explores the new economics of monetary union. It carefully discusses the effects of shocks and policies on output and prices. Shocks and policies are country-specific or common. They occur on the demand or supply side. Countries can differ in behavioural functions. Wages can be fixed,...

This paper studies the welfare impact of a common monetary policy in the context of a two-country, general equilibrium model with liquidity effect and nominal wage contracts, heterogeneous agents, imperfect competition in the labor market, trade in goods, immobility of labor and mobility of...

There are potential gains for most countries joining the planned EMU. It is argued that these gains are not primarily due to the creation of a currency area but, they depend on the high degree of political independence a European central bank can obtain. The transition path to the EMU with its...