Labour Demand, Wage Mark-ups and Product Market Integration

Globalization makes it easier to relocate production and thus employment across countries. Therefore, it is often asserted that labour demand becomes more elastic, causing wage mark-ups to fall and thus erode the effective market power of trade unions. We explore this issue in a general equilibrium model where the elasticity of labour demand is endogenized and related to the facility by which production can be relocated across countries. Wages and employment increase unambiguously as a result of product market integration, but it is ambiguous whether wage mark-ups decrease or increase. A numerical illustration suggests that the elasticity effect – even when the wage mark-up falls – is of second order relative to the gains from trade.      

Free-Trade Agreements in a Model of Trade,Migration and Politics

This paper uses a probabilistic voting model to investigate voting for a free-trade agreement between a labor-abundant country and a capital-abundant country. Migration from the labor-abundant country to the capital-abundant country increases the probability of a free-trade agreement, with lower migration costs leading to more migration and a higher free-trade probability. On the other hand, if a lower probability of free trade is caused by an increased voter bias against free-trade candidates, then there is less migration. A dynamic extension of the model is also investigated.     

Residential Mobility, Housing Equity and the Labour Market

UK commentators have noted that the UK housing market may hinder labour market flexibility. The present paper uses UK household longitudinal data (BHPS) for the early 1990s, and estimates single and competing risk discrete time duration models of residence duration to investigate the impact of negative housing equity on residential moves. Strong evidence for an adverse impact on mobility is found, along with results to suggest that the home-owners do not move in response to changing labour market conditions. Negative equity in the early 1990s therefore exacerbated housing market related rigidities in the job matching process     

The Role of Migration in the Variety and Quality of Trade: Evidence from Germany

We explore the migration‐trade nexus in the case of Germany over the period 2000–09, disentangling the two dimensions of intra‐industry trade (vertical and horizontal). We find that immigration is positively and significantly related to intra‐industry trade. However, the magnitude and statistical significance of migration's impact on trade are considerably higher for horizontal intra‐industry trade and increase with the difference in the level of development between Germany and the partner countries. This pattern is consistent with the view that information flows between migrant communities and their country of origin may be more important for consumer goods (where trade in varieties prevails) and that this information effect is more important if trading countries are very different.     

Trade Liberalization and Gender Wage Inequality in Mexico

Abstract

After twenty years of trade liberalization in Mexico, the relationship between gender wage inequality and trade remains insufficiently studied, in spite of evidence of increasing numbers of women in industrial employment. This study aims to analyze the effects of export orientation and other characteristics that represent the industrial underpinnings of restructuring on gender wage inequality for 2001–5. There is consistent evidence of the negative impact of export orientation on men's and women's wages and the gender wage ratio, signifying that women lose in both absolute and relative terms. This result holds after controlling for women's share of employment and the skills of both genders, contrary to the expected effect from trade on equality. There is also a negative relation between a rise in the proportion of unskilled workers and the gender wage ratio, which suggests that the trade-induced skill hypothesis cannot be considered an adequate explanation for gender inequality.     

Wage Adjustments and Labour Market Systems: A Cross-Country Analysis*

Evidence is presented on how well alternative systems of wage determination facilitate disaggregate labour market adjustment. Tests of statistical causality are used to relate labour market pressure to relative wage changes. The conclusion is that rates of change of relative wages are determined independently of the microeconomic market balance. This result holds irrespective of the institutional form of the wage-fixing system.     

City Size and Wage Disparity in Segmented Labour Market in China

The relation between city size and wage inequality is well established for Western countries. This paper finds that city size–wage premium exists across Chinese cities to a lower extent than the Western world. Further, using a simplified model on the Chinese Household Income Project survey data, we find that the city size–wage premium varies with difference in skills among urban citizens. The variation amounts to 50% more for the high‐skill workers compared with their low‐skill counterparts. Moreover, owing to the presence of segmented labour market, the patterns of city size–wage premium and city size–wage inequality premium are notably different for the migrants, who receive a much lesser wage than the citizens and do not experience wage variation owing to their skill heterogeneity.     

Measuring Labour Market Flexibility in the OECD Countries

This paper investigates the adjustment of employment to population shocks in 22 OECD countries over the period 1960–1997. Most of the countries have experienced significant population shocks during that period – due to migration and other reasons. We estimate the speed of adjustment parameter which is used as a measure of the functioning of the labour market. If the OECD countries are compared using this measure, it turns out that the Anglo Saxon countries clearly outperform the other (European) countries in terms of labour market adjustment. In the case of the Nordic countries, the results presented are the most extreme. In practically all OECD countries, the functioning of the labour market seems to have deteriorated over time. These observations seem to be helpful in explaining the behaviour of unemployment rates in the OECD area.     

Wage Inequality and Wage Mobility in Europe

Using data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions, this paper investigates wage inequality and wage mobility in Europe. Decomposing inequality into within‐ and between‐group inequality, we analyze to what extent wage inequality and mobility can be explained by observable characteristics. Furthermore, we investigate which individual and household characteristics determine transitions within the wage distribution. We find that overall, mobility reduces wage inequality. While a large part of wage inequality is due to unobservable characteristics, the equalizing effect of mobility mainly occurs within groups. Furthermore, both personal and household characteristics play an important role for wage transitions. Finally, our findings reveal large cross‐country differences across Europe.     

Labour migration in a model of North-South trade

A dynamic general eqilibrium model of the world economy is adopted to examine the benefits and drawbacks of labour migration to each of the participatingregions. It is demonstrated that, especially in the long term, the migration of workers may be mutually beneficial: the region of immigration making production gains, while that of emigration perceives a higher demand for its products. In contrast to previous results, it is shown that no immigration limits would be imposed even if migrants' incomes were taxed and, indeed, differentiated payments to immigrants is suboptimal     

二元社会结构中的工资决定模型与人口流动 --当前"民工荒"现象分析

近年来,国内各地区不断出现的"民工荒"现象已经凸现出中国劳动力市场所存在的深层次矛盾问题.基于此,文章在刘易斯-拉尼斯-费模型的基础上,通过对当前中国二元社会结构下工资决定过程的理论探讨,得到关于劳动力在二元结构中的流动条件、均衡条件等理论结果.     

Migrant Networks: Empirical Implications for the Italian Bilateral Trade

A significant number of empirical studies, focusing on different countries, have found a positive link between migration and trade. This paper studies the relationship between emigration, immigration and trade using Italian data. The sample regards 51 foreign trading partners and spans from 1990 to 2005. The results suggest that networks of Italian emigrants in foreign countries boost bilateral trade. The effects of immigrants are weak on exports and negative on imports. Results do not change when cultural and institutional dissimilarities between countries are considered.     

Migration's Contribution to Trade: State-Level Evidence on the Importance of Destination Geographic Proximity

I empirically analyze the importance of differing levels of geographic proximity, providing the first results of the migrant-trade nexus at the state level for both places of destination and origin. Relying on a unique dataset allowing the mapping of Mexican-born migrants' US states of residence to Mexican states of origin, I ensure a precise measurement of migrant networks and other potential determinants of international trade, including the distance and mass variables fundamental to any gravity model. Furthermore, I unmask distinct levels of geographic proximity that a single migration estimate disguises, estimating statistically significant elasticities of exports to in-state, and neighboring-state migration. These figures are not only qualitatitvely but also quantitatively important, corresponding to partial contributions of $1984 (in-state) and $538 (neighboring-state) to annual exports between respective US and Mexican states associated with each average additional migrant.     

Eco-Dumping, Capital Mobility, and International Trade

A small open economy’s optimal environmental policy is studied in a model with international capital mobility and local pollution. The country produces traded as well as non-traded goods. Is it in the country’s interest to engage in ecological dumping by choosing generous pollution allowances for the traded-good sector? The answer depends decisively on the policy regime in use. Dumping is not optimal if the country ensures that the implicit rent on pollution is completely appropriated within the country. However, if the implicit factor reward on pollution leaves the country because it accrues to (foreign) owners of mobile capital, the local welfare maximizing government tends to discriminate against the traded-good sector, the opposite of ecological dumping.     

Trade Liberalization and Wage Inequality: Evidence from the U.S. States

This paper examines the relationship between trade liberalization and wage inequality for 50 U.S. states during the period from 1999 to 2008. The Difference-in-Differences and fixed effects methods are employed to evaluate the effect of trade liberalization on wage inequality in the U.S. states. Empirical results reveal that trade liberalization and de-unionization do increase the wage inequality between skilled and unskilled workers. Evidence shows skill-biased technological change has no significant impact on rising wage inequality. As Difference-in-Differences estimation on time-series cross sectional data involves many years, the conventional standard errors often understate the standard deviation of the estimators. This paper employs the standard bootstrapping procedure and the clustering error procedure to correct the problem, and all sign patterns still hold.     

特别保障措施的贸易效应实证研究

本文选取2002-2006年间立案的20个对华特别保障措施案例,利用6位税则号涉案产品的年度数据,构建面板数据模型定量考察了对华实施特别保障措施过程中贸易破坏效应、贸易转移效应的存在和大小,发现特别保障措施不仅导致了指控国从中国的涉案产品进口减少,而且促使从非指控国同类产品的进口增加,产生了贸易转移效应。