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We present a growth model in which R&D increases productivity, union-firm bargaining determines the distribution of rents and the government can support unions by labour market regulation. We show that if unions are initially very strong, regulation increases only the workers? profit share and has no impact on employment and growth. Otherwise, regulation increases wages. Because firms try to escape this cost increase through the improvement of productivity by R&D, the economy grows faster. Regulation (deregulation) is desirable when the growth rate is below (above) some critical level.

We construct a political equilibrium in which employers and labour unions bargain over labour contracts, wage-earners and profit-earners lobby the government for taxation and labour market regulation, and labour market legislation must be accepted by the majority of voters. We show that the voters rule out profit sharing, because otherwise the government would capture all the gain. Furthermore, if it is much easier to tax wages than profits, then the government protects union power by regulation in the labour market. In such a case, the political equilibrium is characterized by strong union power and right-to-manage bargaining, which causes involuntary unemployment.

This paper examines the relationship between growth and inflation in an open economy where private agents can transfer resources abroad. To obtain endogenous growth, we assume that the international credit market is imperfect. We show that when the governments behave rationally the growth and inflation rates should not be correlated, and that the optimal inflation rate can be found by setting the interest rate elasticity of money holdings equal to the tax rate elasticity of the tax base.

I examine the welfare effects of emission permit trading in an economy where the use of energy in production generates welfare-harming emissions, there is a regulator that sets industry-specific emission permits and the industries influence the regulator by paying political contributions. I show that policy with nontraded emission permits establishes aggregate production efficiency. Emission permit trading hampers efficiency and welfare by increasing the use of emitting inputs in dirty and decreasing that in clean industries. ; Peer reviewed

I examine the effects of globalization in countries where the employed workers support the unemployed and the governments control wages by regulating the workers' relative bargaining power. I use a general oligopolistic equilibrium model of two integrated countries with two inputs: labor and potentially footloose capital. National competition for jobs by labor market deregulation creates a distortion with suboptimal wages. The mobility of capital aggravates that distortion by increasing the wage elasticity of labor demand, which decreases wages and welfare even further. The delegation of labor market regulation to an international agent eliminates that distortion, increasing wages and aggregate welfare.