The length of collective wage agreements in Sweden between 1908 and 2005 is explored to evaluate a variety of policy regimes from the wage contract-makers' perspective. Adopting a new long-run test, it is found that wage contract length decreases in response to an increase in â€macroeconomic...

This paper contributes to the scant empirical literature on the effects of emigration on source countries' labour markets. Using a novel dataset by Brücker et al. (2009), we find that emigration from the Central and Eastern European (CEE) members of EU during the period 2000 to 2007 has...

We describe the size and timing for comprehensive as well as decomposed measures of unemployment. We then test for and confirm a change in the structural rate of unemployment by finding structural breaks in the Okun and Beveridge relations. Finally, we employ existing empirical models to examine...

Recent research on the Great Depression has concluded that a worldwide decline in aggregate demand, emanating from the United States, was propagated into a fall in real activity through sticky nominal wages. The question remains: Why were nominal wages so sticky? I examine two hypotheses based...

Large review costs lead to time-dependent price setting rules. State-dependent rules become more likely when there is an increase in: set-up costs, the variability of the equilibrium price or the efficiency loss associated with being away from equilibrium.

We construct yearly fiscal series for Sweden between 1719 and 2003 including expenditures, revenues, deficits and debt. We present measures for the fiscal branch of the central government as well as for the consolidated fiscal and monetary branch, which includes seigniorage. We evaluate the...

Unlike Knut Wicksell, Eli Heckscher did not believe the time had arrived for “managed money” to replace the gold standard after World War I. The war had shown that only a gold standard could bind the central bank to a time-consistent policy with reasonable price stability. Heckscher likened...

Unlike Knut Wicksell, Eli Heckscher did not believe the time had arrived for “managed money” to replace the gold standard after World War I. The war had shown that only a gold standard could bind the central bank to a time-consistent policy with reasonable price stability. Heckscher likened...