How are wages set in an open economy? What role is played by demand pressure, international competition, and structural factors in the labour market? How important is nominal wage rigidity and exchange rate policy for the medium term evolution of real wages and competitiveness? To answer these...

A contract between a risk-neutral firm and its risk-averse workers is considered under uncertainty about product demand. The authors show that profit sharing can be used to attain the efficient level of employment and, at the same time, preserve optimal risk sharing between the parties. Optimal...

The authors formulate a stochastic infinite-horizon insider-outsider model that is solved explicitly and used to investigate the consequences of alternative 'seniority' rules for wage and employment determination. The model is simple enough to allow analysis of several different institutional...

Price and investment equations are estimated using a unique data set for Swedish manufacturing plants. The empirical specification is based on a theoretical model of a financially constrained firm selling its output in a customer market. We find that, as predicted by our theoretical model,...

We formulate an efficiency wage model with on-the-job search where wages depend on turnover and employers may use information on whether the searching worker is employed or unemployed as a hiring criterion. We show theoretically that ranking by employment status affects both the level and the...

A parsimonious structural model of price and quantity dynamics is applied to Swedish exports and export prices for manufactured goods 1972-1996. Two sources of dynamics are considered: customer markets and pre-set prices. The dynamic adjustment of exports is very much in line with what the...

A wage equation for a small open economy is derived and estimated on aggregate data for the Nordic countries. The equation is derived from a model of wage bargaining over nominal wages; hence both long run coefficients and adjustment parameters have clear economic interpretations. Wages depend...

We construct a model of a financially constrained firm making pricing and investment decisions. The firm operates in a market where customers respond slowly to price changes and there are implementation lags in investment (time to build). Our model implies that the markup over marginal cost is...