In New Keynesian models nominal rigidities determine socially inefficient outcomes. Our paper reverses this view: properly designed monetary policies may take advantage of predetermined nominal wages to discipline monopolistic wage setters. This, in turn, requires accepting a non-zero inflation...

Empirical contributions show that wage re-negotiations take place while expiring contracts are still in place. This is captured by assuming that nominal wages are pre-determined. As a consequence, wage setters act as Stackelberg leaders, whereas in the typical New Keynesian model the...

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...

In this paper we analyze macroeconomic interactions between trade unions, the central bank and the fiscal policymaker. We explicitly model unions’ concern for public expenditure, paving the way for an analysis of the potential gains from cooperation between the fiscal policymaker and the...

We challenge the widely held belief that New-Keynesian models cannot predict optimal positive inflation rates. In fact these are justified by the Phelps argument that monetary financing can alleviate the burden of distortionary taxation. We obtain this result because, in contrast with previous...

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...

The paper studies the relationship between equilibrium existence in LQ games and the classical theory of economic policy, generalizing some recent results. In particular, by focusing on system controllability instead of the controllability by one or some of the players, we find conditions for...

We show that rational expectations do not affect the controllability of an economic system, either in its static or in its dynamic version, even though their introduction in many other circumstances may make it impossible for the policymaker to affect certain variables due to policy invariance,...

The paper extensively studies the static model of non-cooperative linear quadratic games in which a set of agents chooses their instruments strategically to minimize their linear quadratic criterion. We first derive the necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a Nash equilibrium...

By introducing the concepts of implicit coalitions and conflict of interests in a multiple-player context, this paper generalizes some theorems on policy invariance and equilibrium existence and uniqueness for LQ policy games.