The Policy Assignment Principle with Wage Indexation

Abstract

This paper is the first attempt to examine the role of alternative wage indexation schemes in coordina tion between fiscal and exchange rate policies to achieve given desirable macroeconomic targets under fixed exchange rates with perfect capital mobility. By introducing an explicit specification of the supply side similar to Sachs (1980) and Pitchford (1990) into the Mundell (1963) framework, we show that the crucial factor determining whether the mixture of fiscal and exchange rate policies will successfully work to stabilize output and official foreign reserves is the degree of wage indexation. Furthermore, we also show that such a finding under fixed exchange rates is robust when the analysis shifts to the sys tem of a managed floating regime.