Real exchange rate adjustment, wage-setting institutions, and fiscal stabilization policy: Lessons of the Eurozone?s first deca
Wendy Carlin ()
No 8918, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers
Abstract:
In terms of macroeconomic performance, the Eurozone?s first decade is a story of successful inflation-targeting by the ECB for the common currency area as a whole combined with the persistence of real exchange rate and current account disequilibria at member country level. According to the standard New Keynesian model of a small member of a currency union, policy intervention at country level is not necessary to ensure adjustment to country-specific shocks. Self-stabilization of shocks takes place through the adjustment of prices and wages to ensure that the real exchange rate returns to equilibrium. That this did not happen in the Eurozone appears to be related to the presence of non-rational wage-setters in a number of member countries. A related second departure from the New Keynesian model was the transmission of nonrational inflation expectations to the real interest rate, propagating easy credit conditions in countries with inflation above target. Problems of real exchange rate misalignment among members were exacerbated by the ability of Germany?s wagesetting institutions to deliver self-stabilization. The implications for policy focus on using fiscal policy to target the real exchange rate and / or on reforms to labour markets that deliver real exchange rate oriented wage-setting.
Keywords: Eurozone; Real exchange rate; Fiscal policy; New keynesian model; Wage-setting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E61 E62 E65 F41 O52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-eec, nep-mac and nep-opm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)
Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP8918 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
Related works:
Journal Article: Real Exchange Rate Adjustment, Wage-Setting Institutions, and Fiscal Stabilization Policy: Lessons of the Eurozone's First Decade (2013) 
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:cpr:ceprdp:8918
Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP8918
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().