Wage Determination And Incomes Policy In Open Economies

Written by Anne Romanis Braun, a former staff member of the IMF's Research Department, this volume deals with the nature of wage determination and the problem of securing an economically appropriate development of money incomes in an open economy over the medium term.

Reviews the history of wage determination in each country since the early 1980s and considers the past and future role of incomes policy.

This volume seeks to go beyond the microeconomic view of wages as a cost having negative consequences on a given firm, to consider the positive macroeconomic dynamics associated with wages as a major component of aggregate demand.

The authors present a new treatment of macroeconomics. Its key characteristic is the use of wage bargaining and price-setting under imperfect competition, making product and labour market assumptions closer to the real world.

As part of the postwar settlement, and especially since the 1960s, small European democracies instituted many entitlement programs and redistributive income policies. Each country has responded differently, however, to the economic stagnation that followed the turmoil in world trade and monetary relations of the 1970s. Comparing the recent history of relations among business, labor, and government in four countries, Paulette Kurzer addresses complex questions at the heart of contemporary debates in political economy. Kurzer challenges the assumption that the evolution of social arrangements between government, labor, and employers can be understood without examining the interests of capital and trends toward transnationalization. Business and Banking will be required reading for anyone concerned with the future balance between political and social institutions in Europe - including political scientists, comparativists, political economists, economic historians, and others interested in finance and public policy.