LDCs and international division of labour

The following contribution represents a critical appraisal of the developing countries’ demands for a reform of the existing international division of labour which may help to find a better way of improving their position in the world trade system. It is based on a detailed analysis of the Japanese experiences in West European markets.     

International trade and unemployment: Theory and cross-national evidence

We present a model of trade and search-induced unemployment, where trade results from Heckscher-Ohlin (H-O) and/or Ricardian comparative advantage. Using cross-country data on trade policy, unemployment, and various controls, and controlling for endogeneity and measurement-error problems, we find fairly strong and robust evidence for the Ricardian prediction that unemployment and trade openness are negatively related. This effect dominates the positive H-O effect of trade openness on unemployment for capital-abundant countries, which turns negative for labor-abundant countries. Using panel data, we find an unemployment-increasing short-run impact of trade liberalization, followed by an unemployment-reducing effect leading to the new steady state.     

International Migration and Child labour in Developing Countries

This paper investigates the labor market effect of international migration on child work in countries of origin. We use an original cross‐country survey dataset, which combines information on international migration with detailed  individual‐level data on child labour at age 5–14 in a wide range of developing countries. By exploiting both within and cross‐country variation and controlling for country fixed effects, we find strong and robust evidence on the role of international mobility of workers in reducing child labour in disadvantaged households through changes in the local labour market.     

A french view of trends in the international division of labour

The French ideas on the future international division of labour and a new international economic order are presented in the following article on the basis of a recently published study of the French Ministry of Industry and Research¹.     

Protection of the environment,international division of labour and the developing countries

Environmental problems are encountered today all over the world, but they raise by their causes and nature two clearly distinguishable sets of problems in the economies of developing and developed countries. While those facing the industrialized nations result in the main from the industrial growth process, the typical environmental problems of the developing countries stem essentially from factors inherent in the low level of economic development—poverty, disease and inadequacy of basic supplies.     

Is greater flexibility in the labour market the answer to the unemployment crisis?

In view of high and persistent unemployment in the European industrialised countries there is growing consensus that more flexibility is needed with regard to both the legal and institutional conditions governing the labour market (external flexibility) and the management of human resources within individual firms (internal flexibility). This article examines the interaction between internal and external flexibility with special reference to wages, working time and job security.     

International migration versus foreign investment in the presence of unemployment

"This paper extends the standard (two-factor, one-good) model of international factor movements, to include unemployment due to a minimum-income guarantee within the capital-abundant country. From this country's perspective, we establish important departures from previous (full-employment) results. Most notably, our analysis shows that: (1) free factor mobility is worse than no mobility; (2) the optimal degree of labour migration is zero; and (3) national welfare can always be maximized by an optimal flow of capital. The analysis is then extended to examine: (1) illegal migration; (2) subsidization of employment; and (3) alternative views of unemployment."     

当前我国结构性失业的现状分析

我国面临着严峻的失业压力,而结构性失业在我国尤为突出.当前我国结构性失业主要表现为:东南沿海地区的"民工荒"突出、全国范围的"技工荒"明显、大学生结构性失业问题凸显、下岗失业人员实现再就业困难、中高级人才荒愈演愈烈.     

International spillovers of China's structural reforms

This paper sheds light on the international spillovers of China's reforms in upgrading industrial capabilities, liberalizing capital account, internationalizing the renminbi, and transition to flexible exchange rates. Drawing on two-country New Keynesian model of endogenous entry and portfolio adjustment, we find that China's industrial upgrading that peddles on yuan appreciation lifts all boats through global production network irrespective of capital account convertibility, degree of renminbi internationalization, and exchange rate reform. Feasibility of appreciation-driven upgrading is called into question, however, when renminbi reform and capital account liberalization go in parallel. We also show that international spillovers disappear once renminbi internationalization is associated with liberalized capital account and flexible renminbi exchange rates.     

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.     

Female labour force participation and labour saving gadgets

Abstract

We show under what conditions women would migrate out of the household sector into formal sector jobs, in response to increased ability to use labour saving household gadgets, which raise the productivity of female labour engaged in household tasks. We model a small open economy with three outputs: one labour-intensive manufactured export (cloth), one capital-intensive intermediate good (gadgets) and one non-traded ‘household-sector good’ (meals) which requires both female labour and household gadgets for production. A terms-of-trade improvement capturing greater world demand for labour-intensive manufactured exports enables greater adoption of labour-saving household gadgets in response to changing relative prices. If the elasticity of substitution between female labour and household gadgets exceeds a threshold, this will result in women migrating from the household to formal sector employment. What matters is not the actual date of invention of these labour-saving appliances (female labour force participation may not grow significantly until long after) but their increased adoption by the small economy in response to changing relative prices.     

成为真正的"世界工厂"--中国纺织服装业的国际分工地位及发展战略

改革开放以来,我国纺织服装业获得了高速增长,纺织服装业的技术水平不断提高,产业结构和产品结构逐步优化,在世界纺织品贸易中的地位持续上升,已经成为世界纺织服装第一大国。加入WTO后,外资和民间资本的大量进入促进了纺织服装业的要素流动,加快了中国纺织服装业融入国际分工体系的步伐。     

Trade patterns,unemployment and growth

This paper analyses the implications of a minimum wage in an open economy two-sector model where the effect of growth on trade and unemployment is explicitly determined. The first-best policy is a wage subsidy to all employment while the second-best policy is a production tax cum subsidy. In the absence of policy intervention it is shown that growth in the short run results in decreasing unemployment for the home country if it is specialized in consumption goods or incompletely specialized provided that the minimum wage is binding. If the economy is specialized in investment goods, then unemployment may increase initially but as growth continues the minimum wage no longer remains binding and full employment is restored. In the long run by examining the dynamic interaction between trade and growth it is possible for the economy to be incompletely specialized with unemployment. If the economy specializes in consumption goods, it is possible for the economy to attain full employment.     

Outsourcing, unemployment and welfare policy

The paper investigates the consequences of outsourcing of labor intensive activities to low-wage economies. This trend challenges the two basic functions of the welfare state, redistribution and social insurance when private unemployment insurance markets are missing. The main results are: (i) outsourcing raises unemployment and labor income risk of unskilled workers; (ii) it increases inequality between high- and low-income groups; and (iii) the gains from outsourcing can be made Pareto improving by using a redistributive linear income tax if redistribution is initially not too large. We finally derive the welfare optimal redistribution and unemployment insurance policies.     

Poverty and unemployment: A cultural approach

For years, policymakers, business leaders, human resources professionals, and economists have attempted to explain the existence of unemployment. Unemployment inhibits the economic growth of a nation and contributes to the problem of ongoing poverty, which cannot be lessened without that growth. Understanding the causes of unemployment and developing policies and programs to decrease it are vitally important for nations around the world, but one key variable in the study of unemployment has been overlooked. That variable is culture. This article will show that culture can significantly explain cross‐national differences in unemployment rates and offers a link to understanding the global problem of poverty that plagues nations today. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Proprietorship and unemployment in the United States

Unemployment and proprietorship can be related in several ways. As unemployment increases, individuals with fewer job alternatives may choose to start their own business resulting in an increase in proprietorship. Alternatively, if an increase in unemployment is the result of a depressed economy, higher unemployment may lead to less demand for the products and services of proprietors, thus reducing proprietorship. Finally, greater proprietorship may lead to future increases in employment as these businesses grow. This can potentially reduce unemployment in the long run. We apply a panel vector autoregressive model to unemployment and proprietorship data from the U.S. states for the years 1976 to 2009 to examine if these effects are apparent in the data. We find that unemployment Granger causes proprietorship, but proprietorship does not Granger cause unemployment.     

The declining costs of international trade and unemployment

A two-country, two-sector new geography model where workers are imperfectly monitored is used to examine the relationship between falling trade costs and unemployment. It is shown that as trade costs fall over time the world naturally falls into an industrialized core and an agricultural periphery. Globalization has a positive effect on employment in the core in both the short and long term. The periphery suffers employment losses in the short term but can gain in the long term.