Economic Integration and the Non-tradable Sector: The European Experience

Sophie Piton

2017 Papers from Job Market Papers

Abstract: From the introduction of the Euro up to the 2008 global financial crisis, macroeconomic imbalances widened among Member States. This divergence took the form of strong differences in the dynamics of unit labor costs. This paper asks why this happened. Is it the result of distortionary public spending, or the consequence of economic integration? To answer this question, this paper builds a theoretical framework that is able to provide a decomposition of unit labor costs growth into various effects of economic integration and policy intervention. Using a novel dataset, it then measures the contribution of each effect to the dynamics of unit labor costs in 12 countries of the Euro area from 1995 to 2014. Results show that trade and financial integration are significant drivers of unit labor costs divergence. Before the global financial crisis, in Greece and Portugal for example, trade and financial integration explain up to 20% of the increase in unit labor costs relative to core countries. On the contrary, distortionary public spending plays a minor role.

JEL-codes: F41 F45 O41 O47 O52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-12-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Do Unit Labor Costs Matter? A Decomposition Exercise on European Data (2018)
Working Paper: Do Unit Labor Costs Matter? A Decomposition Exercise on European Data (2018)
Working Paper: Do Unit Labor Costs Matter? A Decomposition Exercise on European Data (2018)
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