Unions, Central Banks, and EMU: Labour Market Institutions and Monetary Integration in Europe

Bob Hancke
Additional contact information
Bob Hancke: Reader in Political Economy, European Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science

in OUP Catalogue from Oxford University Press

Abstract: This book examines the crisis of EMU through the lenses of comparative political economy. It retraces the development of wage-setting systems in the core and peripheral EMU member states, and how these contributed to the increasing divergence between creditor and debtor states in the late 2000s. Starting with the construction of the Deutschmark bloc, through the Maastricht process of the 1990s, and into the first decade of EMU, this book analyzes how labour unions and wage determination systems adjusted in response to monetary integration and, in turn, influenced the shape that monetary union would eventually take. Before the introduction of the Euro, labour unions were disciplined by central banks and governments, after social conflict in the north of the continent and with the use of social pacts in the others. Since controlling inflation had become the main goal of macro-economic policy, national central banks acted as a backstop to keep militant unions and profligate governments under control. Public sector wages thus were subordinated to manufacturing wages, a set-up policed by export sector unions, aided by the central bank. With the introduction of the single currency, the European Central Bank replaced the national central banks and, as a result, their capacity to control labour unions disappeared. The strong links between wages in the public sector unions and wages in the manufacturing export sector weakened dramatically in many countries, wage inflation re-emerged, and the stage was set for the current account divergences at the basis of the crisis of EMU.

Date: 2013
ISBN: 9780199662098
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oxp:obooks:9780199662098

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://ukcatalogue.o ... uct/9780199662098.do

Access Statistics for this book

More books in OUP Catalogue from Oxford University Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Economics Book Marketing ().