Trade liberalization and the allocation of labor between households and markets in a poor country

We consider the relationship between relative price changes and the allocation of labor between households and the formal wage labor market in the context of Vietnam's liberalization of its rice trade in the 1990s. Many individuals in poor economies work within their own household rather than in formal labor markets. We find that larger rice price increases in a community are associated with declines in hours adults devote to work within the household and increases in time spent in the wage labor market. We also observe increased specialization in household economic activities accompanying these shifts in hours towards wage work. Our results are consistent with the idea that a growth in the extent of the market shifts production and labor from households to markets during development, thereby inducing gains from specialization. Thus, the reallocation of labor between households and markets in response to a trade liberalization might be an important component in understanding the link between trade and growth in very poor economies, currently the focus of the Doha WTO negotiation round.     

International trade and child labor: Cross-country evidence

We explore the relationship between exposure to trade (as measured by openness) and child labor in a cross-country setting. Our methodology accounts for the fact that trade flows are endogenous to child labor (and labor standards more generally) by examining the relationship between child labor and variation in trade based on geography. We find that countries that trade more have less child labor. At the cross-country means, the data suggest an openness elasticity of child labor of − 0.7. For low-income countries, the elasticity of child labor with respect to trade with high-income countries is − 0.9. However, these relationships appear to be largely attributable to the positive association between trade and income. We consistently find a small and statistically insignificant association between openness and child labor when we control for cross-country income differences in the full sample, when we split the sample into different country groups, consider only trade between high- and low-income countries, or focus on exports of unskilled-labor intensive products from low-income countries. Thus, the cross-country data do not substantiate assertions that trade per se plays a significant role in perpetuating the high levels of child labor that pervade low-income countries.     

Trade and the (dis)incentive to reform labor markets: The case of reform in the European Union

We study the relation between international trade and the gains to reform labor markets by removing firing restrictions. We find that trade linkages imply substantially smaller benefits to reform than those calculated in the closed economy general equilibrium model of Hopenhayn and Rogerson [Hopenhayn, Hugo, Rogerson, Richard, 1993. Job Turnover and policy evaluations: a general equilibrium analysis. Journal of Political Economy 101 (5), 915–938 October]. When economies trade, labor market policies in one country spill over to other countries through their effect on the terms of trade. A key finding in the open economy is that the share of the welfare gains from domestic labor market reform exported substantially exceeds the share of goods exported. Thus, with international trade, a country retains little to no benefit from unilaterally reforming its labor market. A coordinated elimination of firing taxes yields considerable benefits. We also find that the U.K. benefits from labor market reform by its continental trading partners. These insights provide some explanation for recent efforts toward labor market reform in the European Union.     

国际大米市场价格波动对国内市场的传递效应——基于误差修正模型的估计

基于2006年2月—2011年3月的月度数据,对国际大米价格波动与中国国内大米价格波动的长期均衡关系进行检验,分析国内大米价格波动的主要影响因素及其程度,考察国内外大米市场价格波动的时滞效应与调整效应,并从外贸途径和期货途径测度国外大米价格波动对国内大米价格波动的传导效应,基本结论是:国际大米价格波动与国内大米价格波动存在长期稳定的均衡关系,长期内国内大米价格波动主要由通货膨胀带动,且价格传递具有明显的时滞效应和调节效应。脉冲响应函数和方差分解方法实证结果表明,国际大米价格通过外贸渠道和期货渠道对国内大米价格产生影响,其中期货途径对国内大米价格波动的传导效应更显著。     

The ‘amelioration’ of child labor, ‘a modest proposal’

More than 317 million children between the age of 5 and 17 are working in the world. Child labor is a persistent phenomenon, even though its incidence has subsided with economic development. In this paper, we conduct a panel study of 101 countries from 1980 to 2004 where child labor is proxied by the labor force participation of children aged 10–14. We look at the relationships between child labor and investments in human capital, foreign direct investments, countries’ openness to trade, and credit market constraints. We depart from the contributions of cross-country studies by employing a fixed effects instrumental variable (FE-IV) panel data model by employing a fixed effects instrumental variable (FE-IV) panel data model to account for unobserved heterogeneity and endogeneity of child labor and individual country-specific effects. We find support for the conclusions of the above-mentioned studies: countries that trade more and have a higher stock of foreign direct investment have less child labor. More generally, we find that trade openness, investments in human capital, and financial development are associated with a reduction of child labor. Child labor persists but tailored policies on trade, investment, and financial reform can lessen child labor along with economic growth, improvements in health, and rising standards of living.     

International trade and macroeconomic dynamics with labor market frictions

This paper studies how labor market frictions affect the consequences of trade integration in a two-country dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous firms and endogenous producer entry. Two main results emerge. First, trade integration is beneficial for welfare by inducing higher productivity, but unemployment can temporarily rise during the transitional adjustment. Labor market rigidities reduce gains from trade, even though they can mitigate short-run employment losses. Second, consistent with the data, the model predicts that stronger trade linkages lead to increased business cycle synchronization. The strength of this effect, however, depends on the labor market characteristics of the integrating partners.     

Wage Effects of Trade Reform with Endogenous Worker Mobility

In this paper, we use a linked employer–employee database from Brazil to evaluate the wage effects of trade reform. With an aggregate (firm-level) analysis of this question, we find that a decline in trade protection is associated with an increase in average wages in exporting firms relative to domestic firms, consistent with earlier studies. However, using disaggregated, employer–employee level data, and allowing for the endogenous assignment of workers to firms due to match-specific productivity, we find that the premium paid to workers at exporting firms is economically and statistically insignificant, as is the differential impact of trade openness on the wages of workers at exporting firms relative to otherwise identical workers at domestic firms. We also find that workforce composition improves systematically in exporting firms, in terms of the combination of worker ability and the quality of worker–firm matches, post-liberalization. These results stand in stark contrast to the findings reported in many earlier studies and underscore the importance of endogenous matching and, more generally, non-random labor market allocation mechanisms, in determining the effects of trade policy changes on wages.     

Trade Growth in a Heterogeneous Firm Model: Evidence from South Eastern Europe

In 2007 a free trade area (BFTA) will be created in the Balkans. In this paper we study BFTA‐induced trade growth in the SEE. Given that welfare impacts associated with trade growth depend on the growth channels, more goods and varieties exported or at higher price or more volume of exported goods and varieties, we study the structure of integration‐induced export growth in the Balkans. Given that no firm‐level trade data is available for the Balkans, we adopt the heterogeneous firm framework, which allows to decompose aggregate trade growth into intensive margin of trade and extensive margin of trade using only aggregate trade data. Our empirical findings predict that the BFTA would primarily increase the export volume through a growing number of shipments (the extensive margin of trade) suggesting that the actual welfare gains from the trade growth in the Balkans might in fact be larger than predicted in previous trade studies. We also found that reducing variable trade costs leads to higher export growth rates compared to reducing fixed trade costs by the same percentage.     

Persistent real exchange rates

Over the past decades, product market deregulation has typically preceded labor market reforms in OECD countries. This paper incorporates labor market rigidities in a model of footloose capital in order to study how globalization might affect the trade-offs generated by labor market regulation and put pressure on labor market institutions. In this two-sector model, globalization ultimately reduces labor market rigidities through either one of two channels: capital mobility triggers a re-allocation of resources, which trade integration amplifies, away from the high-rent / highly-unionized sector; the threat of costly relocations encourages labor market deregulation. The latter channel is more efficient because it avoids sub-optimal sectoral specialization.     

Export and imperfect hedging

Abstract

This paper considers the effects of trade liberalization on child labor that arises out of subsistence needs. It argues that favorable income effects are most likely to reduce the need for child labor in the South, even when export goods have a necessity character. However, in very poor economies, aggregate hours of child labor can also increase as a result of more open trade. Although the poorest families are the ones who benefit the most from trade in a Heckscher – Ohlin setting, their income gains might not be high enough to make them withdraw their children from work, while adverse income effects can raise the incidence of child labor among the less poor. The paper provides empirical support for the argument by finding that in a country panel, increases in trade openness are associated with significantly smaller reductions in child labor among the poorest food exporters than among food exporters on average.     

Trade, wages, and the political economy of trade protection: evidence from the Colombian trade reforms

Worker industry affiliation plays a crucial role in how trade policy affects wages in many trade models. Yet, most research has focused on how trade policy affects wages by altering the economy-wide returns to a specific worker characteristic (i.e., skill or education) rather than through worker industry affiliation. This paper exploits drastic trade liberalizations in Colombia in the 1980s and 1990s to investigate the relationship between protection and industry wage premiums. We relate wage premiums to trade policy in an empirical framework that accounts for the political economy of trade protection. Accounting for time-invariant political economy factors is critical. When we do not control for unobserved time-invariant industry characteristics, we find that workers in protected sectors earn less than workers with similar observable characteristics in unprotected sectors. Allowing for industry fixed effects reverses the result: trade protection increases relative wages. This positive relationship persists when we instrument for tariff changes. Our results are in line with short- and medium-run models of trade where labor is immobile across sectors or, alternatively, with the existence of industry rents that are reduced by trade liberalization. In the context of the current debate on the rising income inequality in developing countries, our findings point to a source of disparity beyond the well-documented rise in the economy-wide skill premium: because tariff reductions were proportionately larger in sectors employing a high fraction of less-skilled workers, the decrease in the wage premiums in these sectors affected such workers disproportionately.     

Unionized labor markets and globalized capital markets

This paper studies the effects of international integration of capital markets in a world where countries differ in their labor market institutions: one country has a perfectly competitive labor market while the other is unionized. We show that workers should favor autarky in the unionized country, but oppose it in the non unionized country and vice versa for owners of capital. Aggregate gains from integration, however, are negative. We also show that, under capital mobility, an increase in relative bargaining power of unions does not always improve workers' welfare.     

The impacts of trade liberalization on informal labor markets: A theoretical and empirical evaluation of the Brazilian case

Following trade liberalization, several developing countries experienced a sharp increase in the share of informal manufacturing employment. In this paper, I examine the impacts of trade liberalization on the labor markets of a small open economy, in an environment in which tariffs affect firms' payroll tax compliance decisions. I demonstrate that a reduction in domestic import tariffs reduces the average formal wage and show that the direction of the effect on the share of informal employment depends on the initial labor market conditions. A cut in trading partner import tariffs decreases the share of domestic informal employment and increases the average formal wage. I confirm the model's principal findings empirically, using data from the 1989–2001 Brazilian trade liberalization episode. I find the results robust to endogeneity and self-selection concerns, which are addressed, respectively, using instrumental variable and switching regression approaches.     

Market integration and strike activity

We consider a two-country model of wage determination with private information in unionized, imperfectly competitive, industries. We investigate the effects of opening up markets to trade as well as of further market integration on the negotiated wage and the maximum delay in reaching an agreement. From an initial situation of two-way intra-industry trade, an increase in product market integration decreases the maximum delay in reaching an agreement. However, opening up markets to trade has an ambiguous effect on both the wage outcome and the maximum real delay time.     

How do trade and financial integration affect the relationship between growth and volatility?

The influential work of Ramey and Ramey [Ramey, G., Ramey, V.A., 1995. Cross-country evidence on the link between volatility and growth. American Economic Review 85, 1138-1151 (December).] highlighted an empirical relationship that has now come to be regarded as conventional wisdom—that output volatility and growth are negatively correlated. We reexamine this relationship in the context of globalization—a term typically used to describe the phenomenon of growing international trade and financial integration that has intensified since the mid-1980s. Using a comprehensive new data set, we document that, while the basic negative association between growth and volatility has been preserved during the 1990s, both trade and financial integration significantly weaken this negative relationship. Specifically, we find that, in a regression of growth on volatility and other controls, the estimated coefficient on the interaction between volatility and trade integration is significantly positive. We find a similar, although less robust, result for the interaction of financial integration with volatility.     

Trade policy in a “super size me” world

When a foreign monopolist sets a single market clearing price for its product, the sign of the optimal tariff is determined by the extent of pass through (also known as the terms of trade effect). However, when a foreign monopolist employs a second degree price discrimination mechanism in the domestic market the calculus of welfare maximization is very different. While there are still terms of trade effects from the imposition of a tariff, the existence of such effects are neither necessary nor sufficient to determine the sign of the optimal tariff. Instead the distribution of valuations within the population is the key determinant of the nature of policy intervention. This result differs significantly from the uniform price case and is driven by the incentive compatibility constraint which places the distribution of types at the center of the analysis. If there is a relatively large fraction of high valuation types in the population, then domestic information rents may be increased by subsidizing imports thereby increasing the consumption of the low valuation types and moving the incentive constraint in favor of the high valuation types. However, if the share of high types in the population is relatively small then the increase in information rents will also be small but the fiscal implications of a subsidy will be large. Consequently, the optimal policy will be to impose a trade tax.     

Wage bargaining and multinational firms

We set up a general equilibrium model with heterogeneous firms to study the interaction between wage bargaining and foreign direct investment. Thereby, we highlight the incentives of firms to invest abroad in order to improve their bargaining position vis-á-vis local unions and we show how changes in the bargaining power of unions affect the share of multinational firms in an open economy. In addition, taking into account this relationship between wage bargaining and foreign direct investment, our analysis provides novel insights on how labor income and the unemployment rate adjust to economic integration and how changes in the bargaining power of unions affect these two labor market variables.     

Trade and imperfect competition in general equilibrium

This paper employs a multi-industry general equilibrium model of oligopolistic competition, free market entry and trade in which capital is used to establish firms and labor is used for production. We show that both absolute and relative endowments matter for the pattern of trade. We demonstrate that market entry to each industry is either too excessive or too moderate while the effect on firm size is ambiguous. If countries are sufficiently symmetric, trade will increase the wage–rental ratio in both countries. Furthermore, trade will increase per-capita consumption in capital-intensive industries and reduce it in labor-intensive industries. Nevertheless, trade will be mutually welfare-improving under relatively mild conditions.     

一般均衡分析在自由贸易区研究中的应用

正在建设中的“中国-东盟自由贸易区”是完全由发展中国家组成的经济集团,成员国产业结构相似,生产技术水平相当,国际分工不显著.这样的自由贸易区对区内贸易量的推动作用有其特殊性.文章尝试用一般均衡分析方法,依据比较优势理论和区域经济一体化理论,论述中国-东盟自由贸易区的建立将给其成员带来“双优势贸易效应”,从而为我国参与地区经济一体化,拓展地区市场,实现“多赢”的地区合作提供理论依据.     

Protection and unemployment

Job loss concerns strongly influence the politics of trade, yet the formal political economy of trade literature has largely ignored unemployment. This paper seeks to extend the literature by merging an unemployment model with a trade policy model. The theory implies that labor turnover rates and unionization rates may significantly affect protection for individual industries. I use US data to test the model and find that protection for an industry declines with its turnover rate and increases with its unionization rate. The results also imply that protection does not increase with output and increases with the number of unemployed workers.