Search results for ""Author William Oliver Coleman""

In this tightly argued work William Coleman explores the macroeconomic implications of politically based restraints on competition in labour markets.Through a suite of compact models the author investigates the consequences of the labour force securing the best terms of sale for its labour by means of the electoral mechanism. He concludes that such ?electorally optimal? labour regulation can explain not only wage rigidity and unemployment, but also wage volatility; episodes of excess demand for labour; the co-existence of an inefficient state sector with an efficient private sector; and the preference for a minimum wage over a universal wage regulation. Finally, the approach can rationalize nominal wage rigidity, and not solely real wage rigidity. In sum, the analysis promises to both complete the Classical explanation of unemployment by predicting when, why and how real wages will be rigid, and at the same time to better secure Keynesian insights by suggesting how money rigidity may be characteristic of electorally optimal labour regulation.The Political Economy of Wages and Unemployment will prove a challenging and stimulating read for academics, students and researchers of economics generally, and more specifically, those with a special interest in macroeconomics and labour economics.

Read more less

This book explores the causes, costs and benefits of inflation. It argues that while the cause of inflation is essentially monetary, the costs and benefits of inflation lie in inflation's distortion of the economy's responses to real shocks.The book begins by securing the Quantity Theory of Money from certain critiques. The theory is defended from the 'fiscal theory of the price level' by a refinement of the theory of money demand, and from post Keynesianism by the construction of a theory of the supply of inside money. To cope with the endogeneity of outside money, a simple and tractable neo-Wicksellian theory of inflation is advanced, which is shown to exhibit a striking homology with the Quantity Theory. The author then traces the costliness of inflation, not to any disturbance of the money market, but to the damage inflation does to the bond market's function of sharing out disturbances to consumption caused by technological shocks. The same damage, however, imparts an egalitarian dynamic to the accumulation of wealth, which will not occur without risky inflation.The Causes, Costs and Compensations of Inflation will be of great interest to policy makers, central bankers, researchers, and both post-graduate and undergraduate students in macroeconomics, money and banking.

Read more less