Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/170617 
Year of Publication: 
2014
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 20
Publisher: 
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza (DISCE), Milano
Abstract: 
Labor mobility is commonly taken as a property of an optimal currency area. But how does that property a¤ect the outcome of fiscal policies? We address this issue with a two country ?two period model, where both asymmetric and symmetric productivity shocks may hit the countries. We show that perfect (costless) labour mobility is not necessarily welfare improving, since it prevents the national fiscal authorities from pursuing indepen- dent policies, opening the way to a coordination problem between them, which is particularly relevant when the two countries di¤er for their intertemporal preferences. With symmetric shocks, the federal fiscal policy can improve welfare over national policies by playing a coordinating role. With asymmet- ric shocks, the federal fiscal policy allows both countries to reach a higher productive efficiency; to do that, the federal government must be endowed with a federal budget, playing a stronger role than plain coordination between countries.
Subjects: 
currency union
labor mobility
fiscal policy
federation
JEL: 
E62
H77
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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