Advanced Search

Wage Flexibility or Wage Coordination? Economic Policy Implications of the Wage-Led Demand Regime in the Euro Area

Contents:

Author Info

  • Engelbert Stockhammer

Abstract

Wage shares have fallen substantially in Europe since the early 1980s. To some extent this is due to a macroeconomic policy package that encourages wage flexibility and wage competition. A system of wage coordination in the Euro area would facility a return to a productivity-oriented wage policy by reducing wage competition. In a recent study on the demand effects of changes in functional income distribution Stockhammer, Onaran und Ederer (2007) find that the Euro area is in a wage-led demand regime. According to their results a reduction of the wage share by 1%-point leads to a reduction of demand by around 0.2%-points of GDP. This finding has far reaching implications for economic policy. A stable wage share would help stabilize demand. The paper aims, first, at clarifying some conceptual issues in the design of a European system of productivity-oriented wage coordination and, second, it discusses the economic policy implications of wage coordination. The present policy package assigns wages the role of a shock absorber. However, as wage reductions do have negative demand effects in a wage-led demand regime, this policy has a deflationary bias. A system of wage coordination will thus have to be complemented by a more active nation fiscal policies and more fiscal redistribution within the EU. If so a regime of productivity oriented wage coordination will help to stabilize demand and it is consistent with price stability.

 

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/working_papers/working_papers_151-200/WP160.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts at Amherst in its series Working Papers with number wp160.

Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML (with abstract), plain text (with abstract), BibTeX, RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite), ReDIF
Length:
Date of creation: 2008
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:uma:periwp:wp160

Contact details of provider:
Postal: 418 N Pleasant St, Amherst MA 01002
Phone: (413) 545-6355
Fax: (413) 545-2921
Email:
Web page: http://www.peri.umass.edu/
More information through EDIRC

For corrections or technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Judy Fogg).

Related research

Keywords: macroeconomics; economic policy; policy mix; wage coordination; European Union;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

No references listed on IDEAS
You can help add them by filling out this form.

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
Cited by:
  1. Peeters, Marga & Den Reijer, Ard, 2012. "On wage formation, wage flexibility and wage coordination : A focus on the nominal wage impact of productivity in Germany, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and the United States," MPRA Paper 31102, University Library of Munich, Germany.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:uma:periwp:wp160

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Judy Fogg).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.