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Article
Openness, Centralized Wage Bargaining, and Inflation
European Journal of Political Economy
  • Joseph P. Daniels, Marquette University
  • Farrokh Nourzad, Marquette University
  • David D. VanHoose, Baylor University
Document Type
Article
Language
eng
Format of Original
20 p.
Publication Date
12-1-2006
Publisher
Elsevier
Disciplines
Abstract

This paper develops a model of an open economy containing both sectors in which wages are market-determined and sectors with wage-setting arrangements. A portion of the latter group of sectors coordinate their wages, taking into account that their collective actions influence the equilibrium inflation outcome in an environment in which the central bank engages in discretionary monetary policymaking. Key predictions forthcoming from this model are (1) increased centralization of wage setting initially causes inflation to increase at low degrees of wage centralization but then, as wage centralization increases, results in an inflation drop-off; (2) a greater degree of centralized wage setting reduces the inflation-restraining effect of greater central bank independence; and (3) increased openness is more likely to reduce inflation in nations with less centralized wage bargaining. Analysis of data for seventeen nations for the period 1970–1999 provides generally robust empirical support for all three of these predictions.

Comments

Accepted version. Originally published in European Journal of Political Economy, Volume 22, No. 4 (December 2006), DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2005.09.001. Published under Creative Commons license Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International.

Citation Information
Joseph P. Daniels, Farrokh Nourzad and David D. VanHoose. "Openness, Centralized Wage Bargaining, and Inflation" European Journal of Political Economy (2006) ISSN: 0176-2680
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/joseph_daniels/25/