According to the European Community Commission the present level of unemployment in Europe should not only last but worsen in the foreseeable future (see CCE 1984). By 1988 the overall unemployment rate in Europe should reach 11,4% if the « optimistic » assumptions retained for the labor supply are to be realized.

These are of course average figures but on the whole they correctly reflect the extraordinary convergence of European deflationary policies. Given structural differences, which remain very limited when one compares them to the other Western economies, the European governments seem to have settled for the same macroeconomic strategies. Of course, they have chosen different timings. France, for example, has grown more than its partners in 1981-1982 but is now experiencing a prolonged recession. Whereas West Germany is doing better as far as GNP is concerned but grew very little in the early 80 s. On the whole however a back of the envelope calculation of « sacrifice ratios » for the leading European economies would yield quite similar results. All over Europe disinflation has been achieved at a high output cost and it is not clear that any country has really done better than its partners.

The small open economies of the Nordic type (Sweden, Norway and Finland, in particular) have close similarities as far as their economic structure and institutions are concerned. They are all heavily dependent on foreign trade; their exports are quite highly concentrated and cyclically sensitive; the labour market partners are well organized and the wage-setting institutions are fairly similar; economic policy priorities are also rather close to one another, with heavy emphasis on employment, growth and external balance.

Against this background of structural similarities, one cannot help but notice that there are clear systematic and persistent differences in the economic policy mixes adopted by these countries. Notwithstanding the fact that these differences are partly explained by different political coalitions, different traditions of economic policy thinking etc, it is worth analyzing the contents of these differences as such and assessing their effects on the economic performance of different Nordic countries. This is what the present paper attempts to do from a certain restricted perspective. In particular, it highlights the peculiarities of the Finnish policy mix.

The high inflation rate and the increase in the unemployment rate coupled with very low growth rates, occured as a result of the second oil crisis, was confronted the policy makers of the new administration with a dilemma. They responded with a compromise of different sorts of policies aiming at achieving a gradual reduction of the inflation and unemployment rates so that they are reduced down to equilibrium over a long enough period of time.

However, the monetary and fiscal policies adopted are not considered as a single macroeconomic instrument. The growth of real output is pursued with an expansionary public and fiscal policy, while inflation is confronted with restrained monetary policy against the private sector of the economy. Moreover, the way prices and incomes policy is adopted postpones recovering of output and profits, thus creating serious fears for a further increase of unemployment and a resurgence of inflation.

In a series of papers (Ginsburgh and Erlich (1984), Ginsburgh and Van der Heyden (1985), Erlich, Ginsburgh and Van der Heyden (1985)), we have tried to assess by how much the real wage should be or should have been decreased in order to ensure short and/or long run full employment.

This short note describes the main ideas lying behind the general equilibrium model built to answer these questions and summarizes the main results.

The model attempts to embed a situation of short run market imperfections into a long run competitive equilibrium framework. If price rigidities and a lack of substitution between factors are acceptable assumptions in the short run, there do exist no better concepts than flexible prices, substitution possibilities and equilibrium in all markets in the long run.

In most macroeconomic models, variations in nominal variables, such as inflation or money growth, are considered to be important determinants of cyclical fluctuations in real activity. The major hypothesis in that respect is the so-called Phillips-curve. In its modern interpretation, it maintains that only unexpected changes in nominal magnitudes produce real effects. Reliable empirical evidence on these effects is therefore crucial for the building of macroeconomic models and the conduct of monetary policy.

Time series of output, industrial production or employment however contain growth and seasonal components in addition to cyclical elements. The empirical implementation of business cycle models therefore requires assumptions with respect to growth and seasonal parts as well, in order to isolate cyclical movements and to avoid misspecified equations. It has become general practice to assume that economic growth can be reasonably well approximated by a deterministic linear time trend. Seasonality is either captured through the explicit introduction of dummy variables or the use of seasonally adjusted data. Again, these procedures assume a deterministic seasonal structure. It is generally concluded in this literature, that unanticipated and possibly also expected changes in nominal magnitudes have non-negligible real effects.