IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/oxford/v19y2003i1p149-160.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Wage-Setting and Inflation Targets in EMU

Author

Listed:
  • Bob HanckÈ
  • David Soskice

Abstract

Although the operation of national coordinated wage-bargaining systems in EMU has produced low inflation rates, EMU-wide inflation has been above the ECB target rate for the last 3 years. By contrast, under the ERM, inflation rates declined steadily after 1992 to below 2 per cent in both the last 2 years of the regime. It is argued that this was the consequence of two low-inflation incentives under ERM: (i) the Maastricht inflation condition for EMU entry; and (ii) the combination of the Bundesbank threat to raise interest rates if German wage and price inflation rose above acceptable limits, linked to the need for other ERM members to follow low German inflation to stay within the exchange-rate bands. These incentives no longer operate under EMU, where individual economies do not have an incentive to contribute to low EMU-wide inflation. We suggest that inflation coordination between the large EMU member states might contribute to a solution while permitting the continuation of real exchange-rate adjustments of smaller economies. Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Bob HanckÈ & David Soskice, 2003. "Wage-Setting and Inflation Targets in EMU," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 19(1), pages 149-160.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:oxford:v:19:y:2003:i:1:p:149-160
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Höpner, Martin & Schäfer, Armin (ed.), 2008. "Die Politische Ökonomie der europäischen Integration," Schriften aus dem Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung Köln, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, volume 61, number 61.
    2. Truger, Achim & Hein, Eckhard, 2004. "Macroeconomic co-ordination as an economic policy concept : opportunities and obstacles in the EMU," WSI Working Papers 125, The Institute of Economic and Social Research (WSI), Hans Böckler Foundation.
    3. Pusch, Toralf, 2007. "Verteilungskampf und geldpolitische Sanktion," Working Papers on Economic Governance 23, University of Hamburg, Department of Socioeconomics.
    4. Alison Johnston, 2011. "The Revenge of Baumol’s Cost Disease?: Monetary Union and the Rise of Public Sector Wage Inflation," Europe in Question Discussion Paper Series of the London School of Economics (LEQs) 2, London School of Economics / European Institute.
    5. Vassilis Monastiriotis & Sotirios Zartaloudis, 2010. "Beyond the crisis: EMU and labour market reform pressures in good and bad times," LEQS – LSE 'Europe in Question' Discussion Paper Series 23, European Institute, LSE.
    6. Alison Johnston, 2011. "The Revenge of Baumol's Cost Disease?: Monetary Union and the Rise of Public Sector Wage Inflation," LEQS – LSE 'Europe in Question' Discussion Paper Series 32, European Institute, LSE.
    7. Élodie Béthoux & Roland Erne & Darragh Golden, 2018. "A Primordial Attachment to the Nation? French and Irish Workers and Trade Unions in Past EU Referendum Debates," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 56(3), pages 656-678, September.
    8. Johnston, Alison, 2011. "The revenge of Baumol's cost disease?: monetary union and the rise of public sector wage inflation," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 53280, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    9. Marzinotto Benedicta, 2008. "Why so much wage restraint in EMU? The role of country size - Integrating trade theory with monetary policy regime accounts," wp.comunite 0035, Department of Communication, University of Teramo.
    10. Alfonso Arpaia & Karl Pichelmann, 2007. "Nominal and real wage flexibility in EMU," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 4(3), pages 299-328, November.
    11. Alison Johnston, 2012. "European Economic and Monetary Union’s perverse effects on sectoral wage inflation: Negative feedback effects from institutional change?," European Union Politics, , vol. 13(3), pages 345-366, September.
    12. Siebert, Horst, 2004. "Germany in the European Union: economic policy under ceded sovereignty," Kiel Working Papers 1217, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    13. Putzhammer, Heinz (ed.), 2006. "Wege zu nachhaltigem Wachstum, Beschäftigung und Stabilität: Dokumentation des Makroökonomischen Kongresses der Hans-Böckler-Stiftung in Kooperation mit dem Deutschen Gewerkschaftsbund vom 25.11.2004 ," Study / edition der Hans-Böckler-Stiftung, Hans-Böckler-Stiftung, Düsseldorf, volume 127, number 166, March.
    14. Christopher Allsopp & David Vines, 2005. "The Macroeconomic Role of Fiscal Policy," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 21(4), pages 485-508, Winter.
    15. Ivan F Dumka, 2016. "Coordinated wage setting and social partnership under EMU. A framework for analysis and results from Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands," Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, , vol. 22(4), pages 445-460, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:oxford:v:19:y:2003:i:1:p:149-160. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/oxrep .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.