Bank of Finland Discussion Papers 7/2001 Anssi Rantala Does monetary union reduce employment? We use a two-country monetary model with unionized labor markets and open-economy spillovers to study the macroeconomic consequences of the formation of a monetary union.It is shown that the monetary...

We study how the optimal degree of conservatism relates to decision-making procedures in a Monetary Policy Committee (MPC). In our framework, central bank conservatism is required to attenuate the volatility of monetary decisions generated by the presence of uncertainty about the committee...

It is known that discretionary policy may give rise to an inflationary bias if wages are negotiated in nominal terms. It has recently been argued that this bias can be eliminated, and welfare maximized, by the appointment of a central banker who does not care at all about inflation (a "populist"...

This paper presents a simple model of policy coordination in line with the New Open Economy Macroeconomics literature. I extent the analysis on non-cooperative toward cooperative solutions by incorporating a collective wage bargaining system and conservative central banks. It turns out that...

A two-country general equilibrium model with large wage setters and conservative monetary authorities is employed to investigate the welfare implications of three international monetary regimes: i) non-cooperative, ii) cooperative, and iii) monetary union. The analysis shows that the unions’...

We study the problem of a central bank whose policy actions simultaneously affect the information flow about its expectations-augmented Phillips curve and its reputation for toughness in fighting inflation. In an environment with an unknown relationship between inflation surprises and output,...

In a micro-founded framework in line with the new open economy macroeconomics, the paper shows that more centralized wage setting (CWS) and central bank conservatism (CBC) curb unemployment only if labor market distortions are sizeable. When labor market distortions are sufficiently low,...