Series:

FIEF Studies in Labour Markets & Economic Policy S.

4 total works

Cover of Does Debt Management Matter?
This third volume from the Swedish Trade Union Institute for Economic Research, FIEF, looks at the problems of debt management. In the mid-1970s, after the first oil crisis, many countries began to run larger deficits on government budgets than earlier during the postwar period. This growth of government debt has occurred concomitantly with a development, liberalization, and sophistication of capital markets. In fact, these latter events have probably been a prerequisite for the growing government indebtedness. The growth of public debt has stimulated the interest of academic economists. In recent years there has been a discussion of the debt burden of underdeveloped countries and the neutrality of total government debt in more advanced economies. However, the possible effects of the management of a given debt on real capital formation via portfolio crowding-out or crowding-in has been relatively neglected. This is why this volume is fully devoted to the subject of debt management, focusing particularly on how debt management influences the financial sector and elements of the "real" economy such as output, capital formation, and consumption.

Cover of Labour Market Policy and Unemployment Insurance
This second volume from the Swedish Trade Union Research Institute looks at recent research on labour market policies. The question of the extent of government intervention is examined between the two extremes of the effects of unrestricted and unhampered markets, and the old Keynesian view of benevolent governments. Job creation policies and labour market programmes both in Europe and the USA are reviewed and cost-benefit rules for job-training programmes are proposed. The study pays particular attention to the situation of unemployment in Sweden, which is low in comparison to many OECD economies. The authors analyze the links between the extension of unemployment insurance benefits and the duration and flow of unemployment in Sweden. They also discuss general issues concerning unemployment insurance and incentives.

Cover of Trade Unions, Employment and Unemployment Duration
This is the first volume in a series of studies which will cover both theoretical and empirical material and will provide a forum for scholars to publish applied, policy-oriented research. The book is divided into two parts, each consisting of a substantial paper followed by two shorter papers of comment and discussion. The first part of the text investigates the relationship between levels of wages and levels of unemployment in unionized economies, outlining the theoretical issues involved and providing an analysis of the empirical evidence. The author then concentrates on the duration of umemployment, a vital topic in the context of OECD data, which shows that duration rather than inflow is the main culprit in the secular rise in unemployment.

v.4

Cover of Trade Union Behaviour, Pay Bargaining and Economic Performance
This volume is comprised of two long theoretical papers accompanied by comments arising from discussants. It aims to explore the questions of how unions formulate their policy stance and which bargaining structure is superior in terms of economic efficiency. The first paper in this volume is by Robert Flanagan and deals with the process of policy formulation within unions. He compares the models generally used to analyze wage formulation with the empirical evidence of a solidaristic wage policy and uses collective choice analysis to shed light on the decision making within trade unions. Flanagan also considers the internal political processes and norms of unions which he argues are arranged to produce uniform preferences and reductions in the number of issues that are submitted to voting among union members. Alistair Ulph's commentary sharpens the issues raised in Flanagan's paper. The second paper concerns the structure in which unions operate, considering specifically the centralization of bargaining processes and the consequences of centralized bargaining for economic performance.
Moene, Wallerstein and Hoel create an economic model to investigate the impact of different levels of union centralization on the trade off between wages and employment.