With the current sovereign debt crisis, the incompleteness of economic integration in the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) has become patent, leading to an intense debate among academics and policy makers. Much of the debate concerns fiscal rules and austerity measures, both of which weigh on growth prospects. In this paper we look at the main structural shortcomings of EMU through the lens of general equilibrium theory. We address two issues (international sharing of macroeconomic risks and coordinated growth stimulation) which are at the heart of the sustainability of EMU. We propose: (A) a specific scheme for mutual insurance of macroeconomic risks; (B) locating responsibility for demand policies at the EMU level, with ambitious investment programs (public, or fiscally-neutral private) as main instrument.

Mobility across countries is often suspected to affect the coexistence of different social insurance systems. A wide variety of social protection systems exist within the EU. Some are of Beveridgean inspiration (with universal and more or less flat benefits), while others are mainly Bismarckian (with benefits related to past contributions). Concerns about the sustainability of the most generous and redistributive (Beveridgean) insurance systems are often based on the assumption of (near) perfect and costless mobility. In reality, labor mobility remains limited. Such low levels of migration rates could, mistakenly, lead to the conclusion that migration would currently not be affecting the redistributive social insurance systems. We address this issue in a two-country setting, where mobility is costly and where individuals differ in mobility cost (attachment to their native country). A Bismarckian insurance system is not affected by migration while a Beveridgean one is. Our results suggest that the race-to-the-bottom affecting tax rates may be more important under Beveridge-Beveridge competition than under Beveridge-Bismarck competition. Finally, we study the strategic choice of the type of social protection. We show that Bismarckian governments may find it beneficial to adopt a Beveridgean insurance system.

Nous introduisons le concept d'empreinte carbone dans un modèle d'offre globale et demande globale avec formation imparfaitement concurrentielle des prix et salaires et en examinons les propriétés de l'équilibre en présence d'une politique climatique. Nous étudions deux instruments possibles de cette politique, une taxe carbone ou un quota de permis de pollution. Nous montrons qu'à court terme, la politique climatique (ou son durcissement) constitue à la fois un choc d'offre globale négatif et, ceteris paribus, un choc de demande globale positif. Elle provoque donc des effets inflationnistes mais a un impact ambigu sur l'activité économique, l'emploi et le chômage. Ce n'est que dans une économie avec des ridigités nominales suffisantes que la politique climatique stimulera -sous certaines conditions- l'activité à court terme. Dans tous les cas de figure, elle pèsera négativement sur les salaires réels.

Nous étudions encore les interactions entre la politique climatique et les politiques macroéconomiques traditionnelles de demande (stimulus budgétaire ou monétaire) et d'offre (baisse des cotisations sociales). Les effets multiplicateurs de ces politiques sont influencés par l'existence d'une politique climatique et diffèrent selon l'intrument choisi (taxe ou permis).

Nous montrons les conditions sous lesquelles une réforme combinant durcissement de la politique climatique et baisse des cotisations sociales sur le travail peut atteindre le double objectif de réduire l'empreinte carbone de l'économie et le chômage, sans pénaliser les salaires réels des travailleurs. Une telle politique a toutefois des effets incertains sur le solde des finances publiques.

How large should a monetary policy committee be? Which voting rule should a monetary policy committee adopt? This paper builds on Condorcet's jury theorem to analyse the relationships between committee size and voting rules in a model where policy discussions are subject to a time constraint. It suggests that in large committees majority voting is likely to enhance policy outcomes. Under unanimity (consensus) it is preferable to limit the size of the committee. Finally, supermajority voting rules are social contrivances that contribute to policy performance in a more uncertain environment, when initial policy proposals are less likely to be correct, or when payoffs are asymmetric.

Competition in a multi-unit auction is measured both by the number of bidders and by the relative size of their demands, compared to the number of units on sale. For the same degree of competition (identical aggregate demand and supply), we can observe different demand structures. Do they have an impact on the auction efficiency and revenue-raising properties? It is essential to understand better the impact of competition structure on performance in order to draw recommendations for the design of multi-unit auctions. Theoretical results demonstrate on a simple case contrasting a uniform-price auction of two bidders with a demand of 6 units each, and an auction of 6 bidders with a demand of two units each, that there are multiple equilibria leading to different performance outcome. Experiments are conducted to compare the performance of these two auctions. Results support that with a constant competition degree, the seller gets higher expected revenue with a lower variance when he faces a large number of bidders with small individual demands. We show that this result is attained with no significant effect on allocative efficiency.

Using cross-sector and cross-country data, this paper evidences that rent seeking influenced the allocation of CO2 emission permits in the two first phases of the European emissions trading scheme. Industry lobbies effectively used the 'job loss' and 'competitiveness' arguments, as unemployment proxy variables significantly impacted the allocation in both phases, and carbon intensity influenced it in the second phase. The countries that adopted a partial auction scheme also gave relatively more permits and in particular to the politically more powerful sectors. This suggests a compensation mechanism and supports the assumption of a political tradeoff between the quantity of permits issued and the decision between free grant and auction. It also confirms that the initial allocation is not neutral in the presence of special interest lobbying.

Since 2008, the euro area unemployment rate has increased constantly, while this economy's GDP was the same at the end of 2012 as it was in 2008. The recent trend of aggregate economic activity in this area illustrates the risk that an economy leaves its stability corridor, in which it usually progresses in a cyclical way, to enter an area of turbulence. In this area, the automatic stabilizers have weak feedback forces. To examine this kind of situation in a theoretical framework, this paper presents a model that relies both on Leijonhufvud's corridor and on Harrod's instability principle. This model allows a threshold to be defined beyond which the economy runs the risk of entering a cumulative process of simultaneous declines in growth and employment. However, the existence of such a process requires unemployment to have a sufficiently direct effect on the growth in aggregate demand, as seems to be the case nowadays.

Dans cet article, nous étudions la forte stabilité d'une règle de vote telle que définie par Dutta et al. [2001] par l'intermédiaire de la méthode expérimentale. Dans ce sens, une règle de vote est dite fortement stable si le vainqueur de l'élection reste inchangé après une tentative de manipulation par candidature stratégique d'un candidat potentiel. Dans le cadre d'une élection avec trois candidats en lice et d'un électorat de petite taille, nous évaluons de façon expérimentale les fréquences de la forte stabilité des règles de vote parlementaires et de la pluralité.