Wage Formation and Macroeconomic Policy in the Nordic Countries

This study examines labour markets in Scandinavia. Scandinavian labour market policies have always represented one of the strongest alternatives to those adopted by recent governments in the UK and USA, and the ability of these countries to maintain such low unemployment is currently of great interest to the economists. The key issue in the book concerns the possibilities of combining wage moderation with active employment policies. Other central issues concern the impact on wages of productivity changes, tax policies, devaluations and working time development as well as of changing institutional conditions. The book analyzes both wage formation in the individual Nordic economies and general aspects of Nordic wage-setting institutions, in particular the relation between centralized bargaining and wage drift. The aim has been to apply modern union and bargaining theories of wage formation.