Introduction to the special issue

This special issue analyses governments' and social partners' responses to the cost-of-living crisis of 2021-2023, and dynamics of coordination and conflict underlying them. The study of inflation responses needs updating. First, because compared to the 1970s-1980s, the recent inflation cr...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Tassinari, Arianna, Di Carlo, Donato|||0000-0002-4406-7739, Ibsen, Christian Lyhne|||0000-0002-4239-5085, Molina Romo, Óscar|||0000-0002-8660-8919
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2024
País:España
Institución:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:325412
Acceso en línea:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/325412
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.1177/10242589251324455
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Collective bargaining
Energy crisis
Inflation
Real wages
Social pacts
Wage setting
Descripción
Sumario:This special issue analyses governments' and social partners' responses to the cost-of-living crisis of 2021-2023, and dynamics of coordination and conflict underlying them. The study of inflation responses needs updating. First, because compared to the 1970s-1980s, the recent inflation crisis was hardly intensified by high wage demands. Secondly, because industrial relations and collective bargaining institutions have over the last three decades undergone liberalisation reforms that have eroded coordination capacities. Contributions to this special issue show cross-country variation in real wage dynamics, inflation's distributional impacts and governments' policies to tackle them. The interaction between government policies, collective bargaining institutions and social partners' strategies largely accounts for this variation. In most cases, governments no longer coordinate with social partners nor use them to enforce wage restraint to internalise inflation shocks. Rather, governments actively manage inflation through direct intervention, framing policies and steering them to either shield competitiveness, support domestic demand or reduce inequalities.