We address the coordination failures that arise in models with multiple equilibria and study how they may be resolved by reconsidering the role of cheap talk communication as an equilibrium selection device. We introduce an outside option (representing common-knowledge expected outcomes in the...

The paper shows that a monetary policy regime that allows for a positive inflation rate disciplines monopolistic wages setters if these, when setting contracts, internalize the consequences of their choices for economic outcomes over the life of the contract. We also show that discretionary...

The main aim of this article is to investigate the sources of money non-neutrality in policy games involving one or more trade unions in simple analytical settings. We show that there are common roots in the non-neutrality results so far obtained in apparently different contexts.

Recent developments in macroeconomics resurrect the view that welfare costs of inflation arise because the latter acts as a tax on money balances. Empirical contributions show that wage re-negotiations take place while expiring contracts are still in place. Bringing these seemingly unrelated...

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 optimal positive inflation rates. In fact, interest rates are justified by the Phelps argument that monetary financing can alleviate the burden of distortionary taxation. We obtain this result because, in contrast with...

Issues of policy effectiveness and neutrality are widespread in the economic literature. They have been increasingly raised in specific contexts within the class of LQ (linear-quadratic) policy games in the last 20 years, notably with reference to monetary policy. The more general conditions...

European countries have progressively integrated from the point of view of trade and investment and have a common currency now. However, labour market and fiscal institutions have largely retained their national status. The aim of this paper is to examine: a) the possibility for trade unions of...

In this paper we propose straightforward extensions of multi-union, monopolistic competition models appearing in the recent literature on the macroeconomic effects of monetary policy. We extend these models from the Stackelberg equilibrium to the Nash equilibrium under variations in labor market...

By considering a standard game between the Government and a centralised trade union, we investigate the robustness of the claim that corporatism has a positive effect on macroeconomic performance. We test this claim with respect to different kinds of non-co-operative equilibria, model...