Institutional Conflicts and Complementarities: Monetary Policy and Wage Bargaining Institutions in EMU

This important collection presents an authoritative selection of papers on "Institutional Conflicts and Complementarities" This publication is intent on building bridges between economics and the other social sciences. The focus is on the interaction between monetary policy and wage bargaining institutions in European Monetary Union (EMU). Institutional Conflicts and Complementarities is written by acknowledged experts in their field. The outcome is a broad analysis of the interactions of labour market actors and central banks. The volume addresses the recent changes in EMU. An important theoretical, empirical, and policy-relevant conclusion that emerges from Institutional Conflicts and Complementarities is that even perfectly credible monetary conservatism has long-term real effects, even in equilibrium models with fully rational expectations. The contributions to Institutional Conflicts and Complementarities identify linkages between wage bargaining institutions and central banks with a particular focus on EMU.

We consider complementarities between institutions located in different areas of the political economy and ask: Can labour-market actors and independent central banks interact in mutually reinforcing ways? The analyses in Institutional Conflicts and Complementarities study critically the neutrality assumption under the conditions of institutional interactions in EMU.