International Trade Union Organizations

An attempt is made in this article to demonstrate that Alfred Marshall and John Maynard Keynes erected a number of signposts that point in the direction of a normative, institutional and policy-oriented social economics of labor. They opined that dysfunctioning institutions had thrown most members of the working class into an abyss of poverty. According to Marshall, poverty was caused by institutional neglect of education for the masses. Hence he recommended a drastic overhaul of those institutions that impinged on education. Keynes argued that the rentiers were the villains because they had intentionally reduced their funding of entrepreneurial investments. Consequently, investments dwindled and unemployment caused working-class poverty to rise above its customary levels. Keynes's solution was public investment in private enterprises, which he called socialization of investment. This would cause euthanasia of the anti-social rentiers. Because of their recommendations, Marshall and Keynes called themselves socialists.     

International Trade and Gender Wage Discrimination: Evidence from East Asia

The paper explores how competition from international trade affects gender wage discrimination in two open economies. According to neoclassical theory, if discrimination is costly, then increased industry competitiveness from international trade lessens the incentive for employers to discriminate against women. This effect should be stronger in concentrated sectors, where employers can use excess profits to cover the costs of discrimination. Alternatively, increased international trade may reduce women's bargaining power to achieve wage gains. Results for Taiwan and Korea indicate that, in contrast to neoclassical theory, competition from foreign trade in concentrated industries is positively associated with wage discrimination against women.     

Time-Series Wage Differential in Taiwan: The Role of International Trade

Rising relative wages between skilled and unskilled workers in developed countries has been a popular subject of recent studies. This paper analyzes Taiwan, a semi-developed economy, where the relative wage reveals a declining trend since the mid-1980s. The authors study the role of international trade. A major point of departure is to distinguish the effects of net exports to OECD countries from those to non-OECD countries. The paper also differentiates the effects of net exports to China from those to non-OECD countries except China. It is found that net exports to the OECD countries raise the relative wage of skilled workers, whereas net exports to non-OECD countries and China diminish the relative wage. Moreover, the impacts of net exports to China are much larger than those to OECD and other non-OECD countries. The documented wage effects of international trade in this work diverge from what existing works have argued based on Heckscher–Ohlin theory.     

Union Wage Effects and the Probability of Union Membership*

This paper uses Lee's (1978) model to determine the wage gains associated with trade union membership and the reasons individuals join trade unions in Australia The data are derived from the 1984 Australian National Social Science Survey. A major conclusion is that unions secure a 17.22 per cent wage gain for their members, other things the same. This expected wage premium is shown to have an important positive impact upon the union membership decision. The welfare loss associated with the union wage premium is argued to be relatively minor about one half of one per cent of gross domestic product     

A Theoretical Analysis of Trade Union Membership Fees, Bargaining Power, Wage Rate and Unemployment

The positive effect of membership fees on trade unions' cohesion and commitment and the adverse effect of these fees on trade unions' density imply that the effects of membership fees on trade unions' bargaining power, wage rate and unemployment can be depicted by inverted U-shaped curves whose upper bounds are reached when membership fees are set at half the ratio of the upper-bound on members' level of satisfaction from the trade union services to their disposable income rate. The implications of these effects for membership fees are analysed for a trade union that sets its membership fee so as to minimise the loss stemming from missing wage rate and unemployment targets.     

Wage Bargaining, Inventories, and Union Legislation

This paper analyses a strategic bargaining game where the firm may or maynot be able to sell out of its inventory of finished goods during astrike. Firms and the union are both risk neutral and have the same discountrate. It is shown that the wage equilibrium corresponds to the axiomaticNash bargaining solution where the threatpoints are the agents' payoffsshould bargaining continue indefinitely. We use the 1980 and 1982 EmploymentActs to test this theory, interpreting that legislation change as changingthe firm's threatpoint but not its bargaining power. This allows us toidentify the value of the firm's threatpoint post-1982. Formal testssupport the theory. Also consistent with the theory, it is found that unionwages decrease with inventories after 1982, but not before, and that theunion wage gap is smaller after 1982.     

Trade, Technology and UK Wage Inequality

This paper examines the impact of international trade and technical change on changes in the UK skill premium. We first measure trade as changes in product prices and technical change as TFP growth. Then we relate price and TFP changes to a set of underlying forces. Among our results are (a) changes in prices, not TFP, were the major force behind the rise in inequality in the 1980s; (b) changes in OECD prices and UK tariffs significantly raised 1980s skill premia through their effects on prices, and that industry concentration significantly raised 1980s skill premia through its effect on TFP.     

Trade and Labor Approaches to Wage Inequality

The paper compares the trade and labor approaches to wage inequality. It first looks at the theoretical differences, stressing the different roles ascribed to sector and factor bias, labor supply and the theory of technical change in trade models with endogenous prices. It then briefly reviews some of the evidence on the sector bias of prices and technology.     

浅议顺应国际服务贸易发展趋势的策略和措施

从二十世纪中期以来世界服务贸易加速发展的趋势来看 ,中国应该从服务贸易的制度建设、行业管理、强化信任机制等方面入手 ,力争加快发展服务贸易 ,促进经济持续发展     

贸易开放与性别工资差距

本文在不完全竞争市场环境下,建立贸易开放和性别工资差距的数理模型。在理论分析的基础之上,本文运用2002年中国家庭住户收入项目调查数据(CHIP)进行实证分析。在控制了年龄、婚姻状况和受教育年限等个体层面和人均GDP等城市层面的工资影响因素情形下,得出结论:贸易开放在总体上拉大了性别工资差距;贸易开放缩小了高技能劳动力的性别工资差距,拉大了低技能劳动力的性别工资差距。从某种意义上说,女性弱势群体更容易被排除在贸易开放的利益之外。因此,提高女性的受教育程度,并为之提供相应的制度保障具有尤为重要的政策含义。     

Macroeconomic Performance and Wage Bargaining in a Monetary Union

Building on a micro-founded model of a two-region monetary union, this paperanalyses the macroeconomic impact of institutional reforms in labour marketsand central banking that may occur as a result of monetary unification. Thepaper shows that monopoly distortions in the labour market are a key factorin evaluating the effects of central bank's conservativeness and wagecentralisation on inflation and unemployment. Wage restraint is favoured ina highly decentralised wage bargaining setup as well as under a liberalcentral bank, provided competition is high in the labour market.     

Employment and Wage Bargaining in an Open Monetary Union

This paper studies alternative patterns of wage bargaining in an open two-country monetary union. Wages are fixed by trade unions for two periods, either at the national or at the monetary union level. It is shown that the best solution with regard to unemployment depends on the nature of externalities and dynamic strategic interactions between the monetary union's countries; namely on the degree of openness of the monetary union, and the differentiation index between national goods.     

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.     

数字贸易进口与企业间工资均等化

基于企业-产品层面数据,采用双边连续差分法,间接评估了数字贸易进口对企业间工资分配的影响.研究发现,与传统进口贸易相比,数字贸易进口会促进企业间工资趋于均等化,这种促进效应主要源自行业内企业工资差距的缩小和工资水平中等偏上的企业的工资趋向行业内中位数工资.数字贸易进口可以通过减少距离成本、提升出口技术复杂度和提高进口贸易速度推动企业间工资均等化发展,但也会因价格差距的拉大而削弱其促进效应.进一步分析发现,企业开展数字贸易进口容易引致就业"替代效应"和进口"鲇鱼效应",这两种效应均会扩大企业间工资差距.     

Trade and Relative Wage in a Global Economy

The effects of trade among similar countries and that among dissimilar countries on the relative wage are examined. Product quality is a choice variable by firms. Quantity production is assumed to satisfy constant costs, while quality production is more skilled-labor intensive than quantity production and obeys increasing costs. Compared to autarky, free trade, by fostering more competition, leads to quality improvement, which in turn tends to increase the relative wage. Trade among similar countries increases the relative wage in all trading countries, while trade among dissimilar countries, in a two-country model, increases it in one country but may increase or lower it in the other.     

贸易、技术进步和工薪差距——关于克鲁格曼和利默之争的探讨

20世纪80年代以来,经济全球化进程日益加快。除了全面快速地提高全球经济的发展外,经济全球化的负面效应也逐渐凸显出来。在美国,从20世纪70年代开始,90%的工人实际工资上升了大约15%,而其余10%的工人工资下降了大约25%^[1]。     

外商直接投资、国际贸易与工资溢出——基于微观企业层面的实证分析

本文基于12180家企业面板数据估计了内资非出口企业与内资出口企业、外资出口企业、外资非出口企业之间的工资差距。研究结果表明,内资非出口企业与内资出口企业、外资非出口企业、外资出口企业之间存在显著的平均工资差距。进一步的分析发现,邻省外商直接投资对本省内资企业工资具有显著负效应;由于交易费用的存在,非相邻省份的外商直接投资对省内内资企业工资有显著正效应。同时,省内国际贸易对内资企业工资影响显著为正;由于区域间产业趋同现象的存在,相邻省份的贸易对省内内资企业的工资影响显著为负。因此,为缩小收入差距,要求我国消除区域壁垒,建立统一市场。     

International Trade,Technology, and the Wage Gap: Evidence from Granger‐causality Tests*

In this paper, we propose an alternative approach under which to examine the source of the increased wage gap between skilled and unskilled workers in US manufacturing. Rather than imposing the assumptions inherent in a given structural form, we posit a long‐run equilibrium relationship between international trade, technology, and the wage premium using a vector error‐correction model. We first test for the existence of a long‐run relationship using cointegration tests. If a cointegrating relationship is found, we then conduct tests on the direction of the long‐run relationship and of Granger causality. We apply our approach to each two‐digit and four‐digit SIC industry and find evidence in support of international trade being an important source of the wage gap. Our results suggest that it is premature to dismiss international trade as a possible suspect behind the rising wage premium.