The traditional and almost universal method of expressing real wages is by index numbers, according to the formula: RWI = NWI/CPI: i.e., the real wage is the quotient of the nominal (money) wage index divided by the consumer price index, all employing a common base period (here: 1451-75 = 100)....

The objectives of this study are three-fold. The first is to rebut Charles Kindleberger’s famous dictum that usury ‘belongs less to economic history than to the history of ideas’; and in particular to demonstrate that the resuscitation of the anti-usury campaign from the early 13th century...

Linear relationships between inflation, unemployment, and labor force are obtained for two European countries - Austria and France. The best fit models of inflation as a linear and lagged function of labor force change rate and unemployment explain more than 90% of observed variation (R20.9)....

The price of oil has had a marked increase since 2002. The prices of Brent and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude -the two main benhcmarks of the market- have surpassed their historical maximum reached in 1991 during the first Gulf War, though, in real terms, the price of oil is still below...

The Phillips curve is fifty years old. Since Phillips (1958)'s original contribution this econometric relationship has undergone many criticisms and evolutions. The Phillips curve yet remains a fundamental tool for inflation forecasting and monetary policy analysis. This paper reviews the...

In the context in which most countries in Western Europe is almost unanimously accepted advantage of using the single currency, it appreciates that for Romania, whose foreign trade is facing up to approximately 2 / 3 to the market, adopting the single currency will bring real benefits. To become...

We use data on enterprise level from a survey of medium sized and big companies to test for downward nominal wage rigidity in Poland. We find relatively weak support for downward nominal wage rigidity when average total compensation in the enterprise is taken into account. However, since this...

The current macro-economic crisis can be diagnosed as repressed stagflation bursting into the open. The Obama Administration and EU stimulus packages prevent economic collapse but do not tackle stagflation itself yet. Without proper measures, a protracted period of high unemployment or high...

Using annual data for Colombia over the last 30 years, we test competing theories that explain macroeconomic fluctuations: the neoclassical synthesis, which posits that in the presence of temporary price rigidity, an unanticipated monetary expansion produces output gains that erode over time...

There is no Phillips curve in the United States, i.e. unemployment does not drive inflation at any time horizon. There is a statistically robust anti-Phillips curve - inflation leads unemployment by 10 quarters. Apparently, the anti-Phillips curve would be the conventional one, if the time would...