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We analyze the welfare effects of trade and migration, focusing on two-sided horizontal heterogeneity among workers and firms. Horizontal (skill-type) heterogeneity among workers generates monopsonistic labor markets as well as within-firm wage inequality and an endogenous quality of worker–firm matches. In a model combining horizontal worker heterogeneity with monopolistic competition on goods markets, trade liberalization causes firm exit which raises wage markdowns and worsens the average quality of worker–firm matches. It also increases the degree of income inequality. Yet, aggregate welfare is higher under free trade than under autarky. Integration of labor markets leads to two-way migration between symmetric countries. Liberalizing migration has an ambiguous effect on the quality of worker–firm matches and income inequality, but it leads to lower wage markdowns and lower goods prices and thus to higher welfare in both countries. Our model advocates opening up labor markets simultaneously with trade liberalization.

Trade regulation can create jobs in the sectors it protects or promotes, but almost always at the expense of destroying a roughly equivalent number elsewhere in the economy. At a product-specific or micro level and in the short term, controlling trade could reduce the offending imports and save jobs, but for the economy as a whole and in the long term, this position has neither theoretical support nor empirical evidence in its favor. Given that protection may have other—usually adverse—effects, understanding the difficulties in using it to manage employment is important for economic policy.

The objective of this paper is to show that part of the fixed cost of a firm’s trade expansion is due to the acquisition of new internal capabilities (e.g., technology, production processes or skills), which implies a costly change in the firm’s internal labor organization. We investigate the relationship between a firm’s labor structure, in terms of the relative number of managers, and the scope of its export portfolio, in terms of its product-destination varieties. The empirical analysis is based on a matched employer-employee dataset covering the population of French firms from tradable sectors over the period 2009-2015. Our analysis suggests that market ex- pansion, both through export entry and export diversification, is associated with a change in the firm’s workforce composition, namely an increase in the number of managerial layers. These results are generally confirmed with the use of an instrumental variable approach to control for reverse causality. We show how these results are consistent with a simple model, where the complexity of a firm’s operations increases with the number of product-destination couples ex- ported and the manager’s role is to address the unsolved problems arising from such increased operational complexity.

Diese Dissertationsschrift befasst sich mit der ökonomischen Bedeutung von Regionen innerhalb Deutschlands. Regionen sind dabei aus zweierlei Sicht ein wichtiges Untersuchungsobjekt. Dies gilt zum Einen, da makroökonomische Schocks über Regionen Hinweg zu substantiell unterschiedlichen Effekten führen. Dringliche Themen wie die Robotisierung und die Verwendung künstlicher Intelligenz, der Brexit, oder US-amerikanische Zölle werden Würzburg anders Beeinflussen als Berlin und implizieren somit unterschiedliche Interessen bei der jeweiligen Bevölkerung, den jeweiligen Firmen und Politikern. Zum Anderen können regionale ökonomische Schocks wie Erfindungen, Insolvenzen, oder die Ansiedlung eines bedeutenden Betriebs durch Handel und „input-output“ Verbindungen zu Schocks von makroökonomischer Bedeutung anwachsen. Allerdings sind regionale Heterogenitäten innerhalb Deutschlands und die komplizierten Netzwerke verschiedenster Art zwischen Regionen weder gut dokumentiert noch ausreichenden verstanden. Dies gilt insbesondere auch für lokale Arbeitsmärkte welche ein Kerninteressen der Regionalpolitik darstellen und ebenfalls von bedeutenden Heterogenitäten geprägt sind. Die vorliegende Arbeit analysiert und quantifiziert das regionale Produktions- und Handelsnetzwerk innerhalb Deutschlands und untersucht welche Aspekte für die beobachteten breiten Unterschiede bei der Anpassung lokaler Arbeitsmärkte an ökonomische Schocks verantwortlich sind. Der erste Aufsatz, „How deep is your love? A quantitative spatial analysis of the transatlantic trade partnership“, setzt sich dabei mit der Prognose von Effekten eines konkreten Schocks in Form des vorgeschlagenen transatlantischen Freihandelsabkommens (TTIP) auseinander. Die Arbeit findet einerseits nur mäßige Wohlfahrtseffekte, sowohl für die Vereinigten Staaten als auch für die Europäische Union und Drittstaaten, andererseits zeigt sie, dass alle Landkreise in Deutschland Wohlfahrtsgewinne erzielen und es somit zumindest regional keine Verlierer des Abkommens geben würde. Der zweite Aufsatz, „RIOTs in Germany - Constructing an interregional input-output table for Germany“, nutzt einen einzigartigen Datensatz von Gütersendungen per LKW, Zug oder Schiff zwischen allen 402 deutschen Landkreisen im Jahr 2010 um, mit Hilfe weiterer Daten, eine interregionale input-output Tabelle für Deutschland zu erstellen und die Verflechtungen lokaler Märkte zu untersuchen. Der dritte Aufsatz, „On the Road (Again): Commuting and Local Employment Elasticities in Germany“, analysiert die Bedeutung des Pendelns für lokale Arbeitsmärkte. Es zeigt sich dabei, dass Pendelströme eine zentrale Marge bei der Anpassung an lokale Schocks darstellen und dass deutsche Arbeitsmärkte wesentlich flexibler und anpassungsfähiger sind als weitläufig angenommen. Der vierte Aufsatz, „Shocking Germany - A spatial analysis of German regional labor markets“, integriert Arbeitslosigkeit in die zur Prognose lokaler Schocks verwendeten quantitativen Modelle. Dadurch kann er den Effekte von durch Schocks ausgelöster Migration innerhalb Deutschland auf lokale Arbeitsmärkte quantifizieren. Es zeigt sich, dass die Änderung lokaler Arbeitslosigkeitsraten als Antwort auf lokale Produktivitätsschocks durch Migration im Durchschnitt um 70 Prozent gedämpft wird. Strukturelle Anpassung führen langfristig zu einer im Vergleich wesentliche geringeren Änderung dieser Raten., Economists (should) care about regions! On the one hand this is true because macroeconomic shocks have vastly different effects across regions. The pressing topics of robotization and artificial intelligence, Brexit, or U.S. tariffs will affect Würzburg differently than Berlin, implying varying interests among its population, firms and politicians. On the other hand, shocks in individual regions, such as inventions, bankruptcies or the attraction of a major plant can, through trade and input-output linkages, magnify to aggregate effects of macroe- conomic importance. Yet, regional heterogeneities in Germany and the complicated network of linkages that connect regions are still not well documented nor understood. A fact that is especially true for local labor markets that are of core interest to regional policy makers and that also feature substantial heterogeneity. This thesis provides a thorough quantification of such heterogeneities and an in-depth analysis of the sources and mechanisms that drive these differences.

Selling internationally requires products that resonate with an international customer base and therefore an approach to markets that is in keeping with diverse cultures (i.e., relational capital). As emphasized by international business studies, this relational capital is in turn related to the successful teaming of a diverse workforce, as this process teaches employees to operate in multicultural environments. This knowledge becomes like an intangible asset to which firms can resort, also when engaging in international transactions. We explore this channel empirically, investigating the impact of workforce diversity on firms' exporting performances and find that ethnic diversity further justifies firms' different presence in international markets. Since hiring is not a random practice, and firms ultimately select into ethnically different labor forces, we exploit the EU enlargement of 2004 to instrument for the diversity of the pool of workers locally recruitable. Because migrants tend to settle where the attitude toward them is most favorable, we use the median voter's political ideology at firm's location to measure the hostility at time of settlement. This gives our instrument spatial variation besides time variation.

This paper investigates how internal migration is affected by Brazil's increased integration into the world economy. We analyze the impact of regional differences in access to foreign demand on sector-specific bilateral migration rates between the Brazilian states for the years 1995 to 2003. Using international trade data, we compute a foreign market access measure at the sectoral level, which is exogenous to domestic migration. A higher foreign market access is associated with a higher local labor demand and attracts workers via two potential channels: higher wages and new job opportunities. Our results show that both channels play a significant role in internal migration. Further, we find a heterogeneous impact across industries, according to their comparative advantage on the world market. However, the observed impact is driven by the strong reaction of low-educated workers to changes in market access. This finding is consistent with the fact that Brazil is exporting mainly goods that are intensive in unskilled labor.

We investigate the role that labor costs hold in exporters’ performance. To do so, we exploit a large-scale French reform that granted most firms a tax credit proportional to the wagebill of their employees paid below a given threshold. This policy effectively translated into a cut in labor cost whose magnitude varies depending on firm-specific wage structures. We use the predicted treatment intensity based on pre-reform composition of the labor force as an instrument for the actual policy-induced firm-level change in labor costs. Although our point estimates are consistent with commonly estimated firm-level trade elasticities combined with reasonable labor shares in total costs, coefficients are found to be very noisy, suggesting lack of robust evidence of a causal effect of the policy. We discuss several potential explanations for our results as well as their implications.

The paper investigates the impact of import competition on rent-sharing between firms and employees. First, by applying recent advances in the estimation of price-costs margins to a large panel of French manufacturing firms for the period 1993–2007,we are able to classify each firm into labor- and product-market regimes based on the presence/absence of market power. Second, we concentrate on firms that operate in an efficient bargaining framework to study the effect of import penetration on workers’ bargaining power. We find that French imports from other OECD countries have a negative effect on bargaining power, whereas the impact of imports from low wage countries is more muted. By providing firm-level evidence on the relationship between international trade and rent sharing, the paper sheds new light on the effect of trade liberalization on the labor market.

We study the equilibrium determinants of firm-level heterogeneity in a model in which firms can affect the variance of their productivity draws at the entry stage, and explore the implications in closed and open economy. By allowing firms to choose the size of their investment in innovation projects of unknown quality, the model yields a Pareto distribution for productivity with a shape parameter that depends on industry-level characteristics. A novel result is that export opportunities, by increasing the payoffs in the tail, induce firms to invest in bigger projects with more spread-out outcomes. Moreover, when more productive firms also pay higher wages, trade amplifies wage dispersion by making all firms more unequal. These results are consistent with new evidence on how firm-level heterogeneity and wage dispersion vary in a panel of U.S. industries. Finally, we use patent data across U.S. states and over time to provide evidence in support of a specific mechanism of the model, namely, that export opportunities increase firm heterogeneity by fostering innovation. Forthcoming in The Economic Journal

(english) Core labour standards defined by the ILO in 1998 are universal, but applied very differently across countries. Compliance is much higher in high income countries. However, the causality between improved labour standards and economic growth remains a controversial issue. Export-led growth strategies might encourage developing countries to curb the process of standards improvement. In this way, they can raise the volume of their unskilled labour endowments (child and/or forced labour) in order to strengthen their comparative advantage over compliant countries and pursue "social dumping" strategies, which aim more directly at increasing competitiveness. We use a gravity model to assess the trade impact of curbing the level of compliance with core labour standards, distinguishing the effects on bilateral trade (geographical specialization) from the multilateral effects on all exports and imports. We show that, other things being equal, countries that meet the labour standards tend to trade more with each other, while non-compliant countries tend to trade more with compliant countries. These effects are identified mainly with respect to child labour and freedom of association. All other things being equal, countries that meet the labour standards tend to be less open than non-compliant countries, but differently depending on the standards, with a non-linear relationship for some of them. Less compliant countries, frequently the poorest ones, may simultaneously step up their trade and labour standards. For median countries, mainly the emerging countries, the level of compliance with labour standards is “optimal” from a mercantilist point of view. For the most compliant countries, the developed ones, their strict compliance with labour standards implies a trade shortfall. _________________________________ (français) Les normes de travail fondamentales définies par l'OIT en 1998 sont universelles, mais différemment appliquées dans les pays. Leur respect est beaucoup plus élevé dans les pays à haut revenu. Toutefois, la causalité entre l'amélioration des normes de travail et la croissance reste un sujet débattu. Les stratégies de croissance par les exportations pourraient encourager les pays en développement à ralentir le processus d'amélioration des normes. Ils peuvent ainsi accroître leur dotation relative en travail non qualifié (travail des enfants et/ou forcé) pour renforcer leurs avantages comparatifs par rapport aux pays qui les respectent et poursuivre des politiques dites de "dumping social" qui visent encore plus directement à accroître leur compétitivité. Nous utilisons un modèle de gravité pour évaluer l'impact du commerce sur le respect des normes fondamentales de travail en séparant les effets sur le commerce bilatéral (spécialisation géographique) des effets sur l'ouverture multilatérale. Nous montrons que, toutes choses égales par ailleurs, les pays qui respectent les normes de travail tendent à échanger davantage entre eux alors que les pays qui ne les respectent pas tendent à échanger davantage avec les pays qui les respectent. Ces effets sont particulièrement nets avec le travail des enfants et la liberté d'association. Les pays qui respectent les normes de travail tendent à être moins ouverts que les pays qui ne les respectent pas, mais avec des différences selon les normes avec une relation non linéaire pour certaines d'entre elles. Les pays qui les respectent le moins, généralement les plus pauvres, améliorent simultanément leur commerce et leurs normes. Pour les pays intermédiaires en terme de respect des normes, principalement les pays émergents, le niveau de respect des normes de travail est “optimal” d'un point de vue mercantiliste. Pour les pays les plus respectueux, ce niveau élevé de normes conduit à réduire leur commerce.

This paper tests whether manufacturing exports pay more to educated workers in an effort to ascertain whether the productivity of human capital is raised by exports. Using a panel of matched employer-employee data from Morocco, we fail to find convincing evidence that exporters pay more to educated workers. Although exporters pay more on average, much of the wage differential can be explained by the fact that exporters have a larger workforce and more capital. We also find that the wages of educated workers do not increase faster among exporters. Finally, educated workers who start working for an exporter do not experience a larger wage increase relative to their previous job. We discuss why our results differ from the literature.

We study the effects of the adoption of new agricultural technologies on structural transformation. To guide empirical work, we present a simple model where the effect of agricultural productivity on industrial development depends on the factor-bias of technical change. We test the predictions of the model by studying the introduction of genetically engineered soybean seeds in Brazil, which had heterogeneous effects on agricultural productivity across areas with different soil and weather characteristics. We find that technical change in soy production was strongly labor-saving and led to industrial growth, as predicted by the model. (JEL J43, O13, O14, O33, Q15, Q16)

This paper explores the impact of immigrants on the imports, exports and productivity of service- producing firms in the U.K. Immigrants may substitute for imported intermediate inputs (offshore production) and they may impact the productivity of the firm as well as its export behavior. The first effect can be understood as the re-assignment of offshore productive tasks to immigrant workers. The second can be seen as a productivity or cost cutting effect due to immigration, and the third as the effect of immigrants on specific bilateral trade costs. We test the predictions of our model using differences in immigrant inflows across U.K. labor markets, instrumented with an enclave-based instrument that distinguishes between aggregate and bilateral immigration, as well as immigrant diversity. We find that immigrants increase overall productivity in service-producing firms, revealing a cost cutting impact on these firms. Immigrants also reduce the extent of country-specific offshoring, consistent with a reallocation of tasks and, finally, they increase country-specific exports, implying an important role in reducing communication and trade costs for services.

Reduced trade barriers and lower costs of transportation and information have meant that a growing part of the economy has been exposed to international trade. In particular, this is the case in the service sector. We divide the service sector into a tradable and a non-tradable part using an approach to identify tradable industries utilizing a measure of regional concentration of production. We examine whether the probability of displacement is higher and income losses after displacement greater for workers in tradable services and manufacturing (tradable) than in non-tradable services. We also analyze whether the probability of re-employment is higher for workers displaced from tradable services and manufacturing than from non-tradable services. We find that in the 2000s the probability of displacement is relatively high in tradable services in comparison to non-tradable services and manufacturing. On the other hand, the probability of re-employment is higher for those displaced from tradable services. The largest income losses are found for those who had been displaced from manufacturing. Interestingly, the income losses of those displaced from manufacturing seems mainly to be due to longer spells of non-employment, whereas for those displaced in tradable services lower wages in their new jobs compared to their pre-displacement jobs appears to play a larger role., Globala värdekedjor och strukturomvandlingens kostnader

Romanian exports represented, lately, a major engine of economic growth. However, only a deep analysis of these can reveal the factors that contributed to their competitiveness. Indicators that capture the changes in market shares provide the most accurate picture of the concept of competitiveness of exports. They are found in the literature as a method of constant market share analysis, method developed by H. Tyszyinski in 1951.

Why did employment growth - high in the last decade - take place at the expense of young workers mainly, but not only. in the countries of Southern Europe? Youth unemployment is now exceeding 30%, after decades hovering around 20% and over, despite a variety of factors, common to most EU countries, that would be expected to reduce its evolution: population ageing and the demographic decline, low labor cost of young workers, flexibility of working arrangements, higher educational attainment, low unionization of young workers, early retirement practices of workers 50+. But neither seems to provide a convincing explanation for countries of Southern Europe. Historically based institutions and political tradition, cultural values, social capital - factors that go beyond the standard explanation of economic theory - provide a more satisfying interpretation.

This paper analyzes the implication of employment protection legislation on a firm's screening process. We present a model in which human-capital-intensive firms (high-tech) with imperfect information about their workers' type attempt during a trial period to identify those incompetent workers who they will subsequently dismiss. Employment protection measures, however, place a burden on this screening process and thereby motivate innovators to embark on medium-tech projects which are more flexible in their human capital requirements. Employment protection legislation thereby distorts the pattern of specialization in favor of medium-tech firms rather than high-tech firms and consequently slows down the process of economic growth. The results of the paper are consistent with documented data on Europe versus US productivity growth and specialization patterns as well as with employment protection legislation in those economies.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the impact of the current global economic crisis on the labour market, including the risk that the recession will be followed by a jobless recovery that contributes to a lost generation of young people in the workforce. The crisis affects different sectors in different ways, but the impact also varies according to age, gender, skills level and type of contract. Although it had a more significant effect on the private sector of the economy, the crisis’s impact on the broader public sector is also obvious. Migrants, both legal and illegal, are particularly vulnerable during crises because they are typically not being provided the same level of employment protection as native workers and hence they are the first to lose their jobs during an economic downturn.

This paper examines the implications of initial conditions in terms of the levels of tariff protection from which countries liberalize their trade regimes on the wage inequality in trading nations. The discussion is confined to the standard two country Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson model to see whether there can be channels, other than those discussed in the recent literature, through which the observed phenomena can be theoretically predicted. The initial conditions are observed to matter in the sense thatfor countries lowering their tariff levels successively rather than once and for all, intracountry wage inequality may change asymmetrically at different stages of liberalization.

The objective of the paper is to summarize labor market implications of population aging and to discuss policy options to increase the employment of old workers. The paper argues that population aging and ensuing shrinking of the workforce will create a significant drag on the economies of developed, transition, and even some developing countries. Thus working longer is an imperative: unless countered by productivity increases, working longer, or both, population aging and ensuing shrinking of labor force will reduce economic growth and may jeopardize the economic well-being of some of the elderly. However, extending working lives has proven difficult, both because workers do not want to work longer and because employers are lukewarm about employment old workers. Among measures to motivate workers to work longer, the paper proposes providing retirement incentives and attractive, flexible working arrangements; and to stimulate employers to hire old workers, it argues for removing obstacles imposed by restrictive labor market institutions, for increasing human capital of workers via life-long learning, and for addressing age discrimination. Chances for extending working lives will also increase with improving health of old workers. The organization of the paper is as follows. Section 1 discusses the implications of population aging for economic growth. Section 2 examines factors that stand in the way of longer working lives - why workers opt for early exit from the labor market, and why employers are often lukewarm about employing old workers. In the policy part of the paper, Section 3 proposes possible measures to attract workers to work longer, and Section 4 describes how to remove institutional obstacles and introduce incentives that would make old workers more appealing to employers.

This paper develops a dynamic Heckscher Ohlin Samuelson model with sector-specific human capital and overlapping generations to characterize the dynamics and welfare implications of gradual labor market adjustment to trade. Our model is tractable enough to yield sharp analytic results, that complement and clarify an emerging empirical literature on labor market adjustment to trade. Existing generations that have accumulated specific human capital in one sector can switch sectors when the economy is hit by a trade shock. Nonetheless, the shock induces few workers to switch, generating a protracted adjustment that operates largely through the entry of new generations. This results in wages being tied to the sector of employment in the short-run but to the skill type in the long-run. Relative to a world with general human capital, welfare is improved for the skill group whose type-intensive sector shrinks. We extend the model to include physical capital and show that the transition is longer when capital is mobile. We also introduce nonpecuniary sector preferences and show that larger gross flows are associated with a longer transition.

International audience; We propose a theory that rising globalization and rising wage inequality are related because trade liberalization raises the demand facing highly competitive skill-intensive firms. In our model, only the lowest-cost firms participate in the global economy exactly along the lines of Melitz (2003). In addition to differing in their productivity, firms differ in their skill intensity. We model skill-biased technology as a correlation between skill intensity and technological acumen, and we estimate this correlation to be large using firm-level data from Chile in 1995. A fall in trade costs leads to both greater trade volumes and an increase in the relative demand for skill, as the lowest-cost/most-skilled firms expand to serve the export market while less skill-intensive non-exporters retrench in the face of increased import competition. This mechanism works regardless of factor endowment differences, so we provide an explanation for why globalization and wage inequality move together in both skill-abundant and skill-scarce countries. In our model countries are net exporters of the services of their abundant factor, but there are no Stolper-Samuelson effects because import competition affects all domestic firms equally.

We analyze how a set of 22 European countries are affected by increased Chinese export competition between 1995 and 2008. Employing product level data, we document a reduction in the export volume of European countries due to increased Chinese export competition. This alteration in the export sector induces changes within the manufacturing industries, especially a decline in employment. The analysis using more aggregated, regional level data, shows that the industry sector as whole declines resulting, amongst others, in an increased unemployment rate. The importance of Chinese export competition for Europe is attributable to its high export intensity.

While most of the offshoring literature focuses on the effects on relative wages, other implications do not receive the necessary attention. This paper investigates the effects on the industries' skill ratio. It summarizes the empirical literature, discusses theoretical findings, and provides empirical evidence for Germany. As results show, effects are mainly driven by the industry where offshoring takes place. If offshoring takes place in high-skill intensive industries, the high-skill labor ratio increases (vice versa if offshoring takes place in low-skill intensive industries). Results are in line with other empirical findings, however, they seem to contradict theoretical causalities. Thus, we additionally discuss possible explanations.

We estimate the impact of international trade on wages using data for French manufacturing firms. We instrument firm-level trade flows with firm-specific instrumental variables based on world demand and supply shocks. Both export and offshoring shocks have a positive effect on wages. Exports increase wages for all occupational categories while offshoring has heterogeneous effects. The impact of trade on wages varies across bargaining regimes. In firms with collective bargaining, the elasticity of wages with respect to exports and offshoring is higher than in firms with no collective bargaining. Wage gains associated with collective bargaining are similar across worker categories. Keywords: exports, offshoring, firm-level wages, collective bargaining.

Estimates of labor mobility costs are needed to assess the responses of employment and wages to a trade shock when factor adjustment is costly. Available methods to estimate those costs rely on panel data, which are seldom available in developing countries. In this paper, we propose a method to estimate mobility costs using data that is more easily obtainable worldwide. Our estimator matches observed employment flows with those flows predicted by a model of costly labor adjustment. We estimate a mapping of labor mobility costs for the developing world and we use those estimates to explore the response of labor markets (wages and employment) to trade policy., Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales (CEDLAS)

We analyze changes in the skill content of occupations in US four-digit manufacturing industries between 1999 and 2010. Following a ‘task-based’ approach, we elaborate a measure of Non-Routine skill intensity that captures the effects of industry exposure to both technology and international trade. The paper adds to previous literature by focusing on both the determinants of demand for Non-Routine skills and their effects on industry productivity and wages. The key finding is that import competition from low-wage countries has been a strong driver of demand for Non-Routine skills during the 2000s. Both technology and imports from low-wage countries are associated with mild cross-industry convergence in skill intensity while imports from high and medium wage countries are at root of persistent heterogeneity across occupational groups. We also find that higher Non-Routine skill intensity has had at best a modest effect on productivity and wages, except for high-skill occupations.

What are the welfare and employment consequences of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) for developing and emerging countries? Standard quantitative models of international trade which are generally used to assess the impact of PTAs assume full employment and hence abstract from (net) employment effects. This paper presents a quantitative framework to study the welfare and employment effects of PTAs taking into account the key feature of labor markets in emerging economies: A large share of workers is employed in the informal sector which is characterized by low productivity and hence lower wages than those in the formal part of the economy. To illustrate, I apply this framework to a set of 13 Latin American and Caribbean countries to evaluate observed trade liberalization episodes since 1950, taking into account the general equilibrium trade diversion and income effects of PTAs which have been neglected in the literature so far.

We estimate the e!ect of exchange rate movements on firm-level wages, using a representative panel of manufacturing firms. We show that the direction and size of wage adjustment is shaped by the international exposure of each firm on both the sale and cost side of the balance sheet, similar to the response of employment documented in Nucci and Pozzolo (2010). Through the revenue side, wages tend to rise after a currency depreciation and the e!ect is more pronounced the higher is the firm’s exposure to sales from exports. Through the expenditure side, a depreciation induces a cut in the firm’s wages, and the e!ect is larger the higher is the incidence of imported inputs in total production costs. For a given degree of external orientation, both these e!ects are larger for firms with a lower market power. Moreover, we document that the e!ect of exchange rates on wages is shaped by (i) the extent of sectoral import penetration in the domestic market; (ii) the proportion of newly hired workers in each firm in a given year; and (iii) the composition of the firm’s workforce by occupational category. JEL classifications: E24; F16; F31.

The impact of imports from low-wage countries on domestic labor market outcomes has been a hotly debated issue for decades. The recent surge in imports from China has reignited this debate. Since the 1980s several developed economies have experienced contemporaneous increases in the volume of imports and in the wage gap between high- and low-skilled workers. However, the literature has not been able to document a strong causal relationship between imports and the wage gap. Instead, past studies have attributed the widening wage gap to skill biased technological change. This paper finds evidence for the direct impact of low wage imports on the wage gap. Using detailed Danish panel data for firms and workers, it measures the effects of Chinese import penetration at the firm level on wages within job-spells and over the longer term taking transitions in the labor market into account. We find that greater exposure to Chinese imports corresponds to a negative firm-level demand shock, which is biased towards low-skill intensive products. Consistent with this, an increase in Chinese import penetration results in lower wages for low-skilled employees.

Unions are often stigmatized as being a source of inefficiency due to higher collective bargaining outcomes. This is in stark contrast with the descriptive evidence presented in this paper. Larger firms choose to export and are also more likely to adopt collective bargaining. We rationalize those stylized facts using a partial equilibrium model that allows us to evaluate firms' value functions under individual or collective bargaining. Exporting further decreases average production costs for large firms in the collective bargaining regime, allowing them to benefit from additional external economies of scale due to lower bargaining costs. Our findings suggest that the positive correlation between export status and collective bargaining can be explained through size. Including controls for firm-size destroys the estimated positive relationship between export status and collective bargaining. Using interaction terms between size and the export status, we find that larger exporters tend to do collective bargaining, whereas smaller exporters tend to refrain from collective agreements. Wir finden, dass größere Firmen nicht nur exportieren, sondern auch häufiger an Tarifverhandlungen teilnehmen. Wir erklären diese stilisierten Fakten mit Hilfe eines partiellen Gleichgewichtsmodells, das es uns erlaubt, den Wert einer Unternehmung unter individuellen oder kollektiven Lohnverhandlungen zu vergleichen. Zusätzliche Exporteinnahmen senken die durchschnittlichen Produktionskosten für große tarifgebundene Unternehmen. Niedrige Lohnverhandlungskosten ermöglichen es ihnen, von zusätzlichen Skaleneffekten zu profitieren. Unsere Ergebnisse deuten auch darauf hin, dass die positive Korrelation zwischen Exportstatus und kollektiven Verhandlungen durch die Firmengröße erklärt werden kann. Kontrolliert man zusätzlich für die Firmengröße verschwindet der Zusammenhang zwischen Exportstatus und Tarifverhandlungen. Die zusätzliche Verwendung von Interaktionstermen zeigt, dass größere Exporteure sich häufiger an Tarifverhandlungen beteiligen. Kleinere Exporteure treffen dagegen eher individuelle Absprachen.

Recent theories of firm heterogeneity emphasize between-firm wage differences as a new mechanism through which trade can affect wage inequality. Using linked employer-employee data for Sweden, we show that many of the stylized facts about wage inequality found in Helpman et al. (2012) for Brazil also hold for Sweden. Much of overall wage inequality arises within sector-occupations and for workers with similar observable characteristics. One notable difference is a smaller contribution from between-firm differences in wages in Sweden, which could reflect the influence of Swedish labor market institutions in dampening the scope for variation in wages between firms through collective wage agreements.

We develop a method for identifying departures from relative factor price equality that is robust to unobserved variation in factor productivity. We implement this method using data on the relative wage bills of nonproduction and production workers across 170 local labor markets comprising the continental United States for 1972, 1992, and 2007. We find evidence of statistically significant differences in relative wages in all three years. These differences increase in magnitude over time and are related to industry structure in a manner that is consistent with neoclassical models of production. (JEL J31, J61, R23)

We juxtapose the effects of trade and technology on employment in U.S. local labor markets between 1990 and 2007. Labor markets whose initial industry composition exposes them to rising Chinese import competition experience significant falls in employment, particularly in manufacturing and among non-college workers. Labor markets susceptible to computerization due to specialization in routine task-intensive activities experience significant occupational polarization within manufacturing and non-manufacturing but no net employment decline. Trade impacts rise in the 2000s as imports accelerate, while the effect of technology appears to shift from automation of production activities in manufacturing towards computerization of information-processing tasks in non-manufacturing.

This paper is a dynamic extension of the well-known theory of trade in tasks by Grossman & Rossi-Hansberg (2008). In my model, a firm’s offshoring decision is governed by production cost savings, but also considers potential imitation risk. I show that such a consideration reduces the level of offshoring compared to a static optimization and that adjustment of offshoring volume with respect to changes in offshoring costs or labor endowment is characterized by overshooting and subsequent movement toward a steady state. Moreover, I find that offshoring affects wages via more channels than are apparent in static models. More precisely, I identify a shortrun intertemporal profit effect and a long-run composition effect, both of which depend on the endogenous rate of product imitation. These effects can reverse wellknown static wage effects from offshoring, such as the labor supply effect and productivity effect. The dynamic adjustment predicted by this model has important implications on empirical strategies to identify a meaningful correlation of offshoring and relative wages.

In a North-South product-cycle model, I study the short- and long-run effects on Northern unemployment of (i) trade liberalization, (ii) tighter international patent protection, and (iii) Southern market expansion. Besides production workers, I also consider R&D workers, which is new to the literature on short-run effects. In the short run, R&D workers are affected before production workers in case of trade liberalization and tighter international patent protection. Unilateral Northern trade liberalization increases unemployment in the short and long run, while Southern trade liberalization has stronger opposite effects. Surprisingly, tighter international patent protection yields a short-run unemployment increase, although it decreases unemployment in the long run. An expansion of the Southern market yields a short- and long-run decrease in unemployment.

We study the relationship between offshoring and job stability in Italy in the period 1995–2001 by using an administrative dataset on manufacturing workers. We find that the international fragmentation of production negatively affects job stability. Service offshoring and material purchases from developed countries foster job-to-job transitions within manufacturing of all workers and white collars, respectively. However, the most detrimental effects for job stability come from material offshoring to low income countries which drives blue collar workers out of manufacturing. Therefore, policy interventions should especially focus on this latter category of workers more exposed to fragmentation processes and foreign competition.

Several empirical studies have shown that the effect of openness on the gender wage gap depends on the skill requirement of the workplace. This paper offers a theoretical explanation to understand that finding. We integrate a statistical discrimination framework with the labour assignment approach to give general conditions under which the matching between firms and workers gives rise to a wider gender wage gap at the upper tail of the distribution, in accordance with empirical evidence. We further look at the effect of trade openness on the gender wage gap along the entire distribution. Workers' characteristics vary in two dimensions, skills and job commitment. The inability to observe individual's job commitment induces employers to base partly their decision on group average. Following the literature on labour and international trade, we assume that skills act as complements to technological upgrading. Exporting firms are more skill-intensive and pay higher wages ; assuming further that worker's job commitment is a complement to technological upgrading, we find that a reduction in trade costs increases wage inequality within-groups and has non-monotonic effects on between-group inequality. Trade openness reduces the gender wage gap among unskilled workers but increases the gender wage gap among high-skill workers.

This paper proposes a multi-industry trade model with integrated capital and goods markets. Labor market imperfections in line with Mortensen and Pissarides (Job Creation and Job Destruction in the Theory of Unemployment, 1994) give rise to unemployment and a channel for the government to influence markets through institutional changes. Labor market interventions feedback into the product market through changes in a country’s competitiveness. Moreover, the distinction between high- and low-skill workers facilitates the analysis of skillbiased institutional changes that have stronger impact on certain skill groups. The comparative static exercise in this paper shows that high-skilled benefit from low-skill biased labor market reforms through higher wages. Lower labor costs reduce unemployment of the low-skilled and increases the reforming country’s competitiveness. One-sided labor market interventions have feedback effects through adjustments at the extensive margin, which affect all workers at home and abroad irrespective of their level of skill. Governments in the non-reforming countries may react to this loss in competitiveness by initiating cooperative labor market reforms instead.

This paper develops a two-country, general equilibrium model of oligopoly in which the degree of horizontal product differentiation is endogenously determined by firms' strategic investments in product innovation. Consumers seek variety and product innovation is more skill intensive than production. Greater import competition increases innovation incentives, and thereby the relative demand for skill. An intraindustry trade expansion following trade liberalization can therefore increase wage inequality between skilled and unskilled workers. In addition, since product differentiation is resource consuming, freer trade entails a potential trade-off between production and variety. The import competition effect highlighted by the model, which plays a key role in determining the general equilibrium, is supported by panel data on Chilean manufacturing plants., Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)

The oft invoked Balassa-Samuelson effect, whereby the movements of prices for non-tradable goods relative to those for tradable goods reflect the movements of relative labour productivities, is customarily derived from a standard neo-classical model with highly restrictive features. Minor modifications to the assumptions underlying the model negate the effect. In general, the effect does not necessarily obtain if technical change alters the elasticity parameters of the production functions. Moreover, the effect does not generally obtain (or cannot even be derived uniquely) in more general models that allow for non-constant returns to scale or intermediate inputs. JEL Codes: F11, F16, J24, O33, PSL Quarterly Review, V. 56, N. 226 (2003)

Recent theoretical analysis suggests that a reduction in the cost of exporting increases the degree of assortative matching between workers and firms in export-oriented industries. Changes that reduce the cost of imports have an ambiguous impact on matching. We combine detailed Swedish matched worker-firm data from 1995-2005 with tariff data to test these hypotheses. The data cover 94 sectors subject to international competition and include all firms with at least 20 employees. Our findings strongly support the theoretical predictions.

We construct a North-South product-cycle model of trade with fully-endogenous growth in which both countries experience unemployment due to union wage bargaining. We find that unilateral Northern trade liberalization reduces growth and increases unemployment in both countries, while unilateral Southern trade liberalization has the opposite effects. We show that the existence of labor unions matters for trade liberalization to have any effect on Northern innovation and worldwide growth. For empirically plausible parameter values, bilateral trade liberalization by equal amounts increases growth and reduces unemployment in both countries. Stronger Northern labor unions hurt both countries by reducing growth and increasing unemployment. However, stronger Southern labor unions exert a positive growth effect for both countries, while decreasing Northern unemployment and increasing Southern unemployment.

This paper assesses the existence and extent of transition cost for the OECD economies associated with the increasing Chinese competition in the export markets. We find that intensified Chinese competition is an important factor in explaining structural changes not only within the manufacturing sector but also of the economies as a whole. In our empirical analysis which is guided by a simple extension of the Melitz Model we employ panel data at multiple levels of aggregation. The data reveal considerable adverse effects on export volume and industry-specific output in OECD countries as a result of increased Chinese competition. These distortions originating from the export market also affect structural variables within the manufacturing industries. Even at a regional level, changes in socioeconomic indicators can be associated NEWLINE with intensified Chinese export competition. Within the framework of our NEWLINE theoretical model, the mechanisms behind these observations are the following: The increased Chinese competition leads to a decline in exports and overall output, implying a decrease in average productivity and wages. This induces the reallocation of labor to the low-wage service sector, which in turn results in a reduction of average household income.

A source of anxiety of policy makers and the public in general is the detrimental impact of trade and immigration on unemployment. The transitory restrictions for worker migration after the EU enlargements of 2004 and 2007 exemplify the supposed negative effect of immigration on labor markets. This paper aims to identify the effects of immigration alongside trade on unemployment controlling for the high correlation between immigration and goods flows in order to prevent an omitted variable bias. The authors use data from 24 OECD countries over the period from 1997 to 2007 and employ instrumental variables fixed effects and dynamic panel estimators in order to account for unobserved heterogeneity as well as the potential endogeneity of migration flows and the high persistence of unemployment. We find no significant effect of immigration on unemployment on average.

We analyze the impact of labour market rigidities on tax competition betweentwo imperfectly integrated countries. Following a shift from a competitive to a unionizedlabour market in both countries, the capital tax can be adjusted upward in the countrywith the less rigid labour market, whereas the capital tax is always adjusted downward inthe other country. Moreover, by reducing the labour cost differential between countries,trade liberalization gives rise to tax and welfare convergences. Finally, when a countryadopts a flexible labour market, the unionized country may attract the majority of capital., Nous analysons l’impact des rigidités salariales sur la concurrence fiscale entre deux pays imparfaitement intégrés. La formation de syndicats engendre une baisse du taux d’imposition des sociétés dans le pays où les rigidités salariales sont les plus fortes alors que l’imposition des sociétés peut augmenter dans l’autre pays. De plus, la libéralisation commerciale, en réduisant la différence de coûts salariaux entre pays, se traduit par une convergence des niveaux d’imposition et de bien-être. Enfin, en présence de syndicats dans un seul des deux pays, ce dernier peut attirer la majorité des capitaux.

Trade liberalization is no Pareto-improvement . there are winners (high-skilled) and losers (low-skilled). To compensate the losers the government is assumed to introduce unemployment benefits (UB). These benefits are financed by either a wage tax, a payroll tax, or a profit tax. Using a Melitz -type model of international trade with unionized labour markets and heterogeneous workers we show that: (i) UB .financed by a wage tax reduce aggregate employment but increase welfare measured by per capita output. (ii) UB financed by a payroll tax reduce aggregate employment and welfare. If UB exceeds a well-de.ned threshold, the trade gains will be completely destroyed. (iii) UB financed by a profit tax reduce the unemployment rate of the low-skilled, but also reduces welfare. The threshold for the level of UB, where the trade gains are destroyed by the redistribution scheme, is higher compared to the case of a payroll tax.

Quantifying the welfare effects of trade liberalization is a core issue in international trade. Existing frameworks assume perfect labor markets and therefore ignore the effects of aggregate employment changes for welfare. We develop a quantitative trade framework which explicitly models labor market frictions. To illustrate, we assess the effects of trade and labor market reforms for 28 OECD countries. Welfare effects of trade agreements are magnified when accounting for employment changes. While employment and welfare increase in most countries, some experience higher unemployment and lower welfare. Labor market reforms in one country have small positive spillover effects on trading partners.

Wir untersuchen die Auswirkungen des beispiellosen Anstiegs des internationalen Handels zwischen Deutschland und dem Osten - China und Osteuropa - im Zeitraum 1988-2008 auf lokale Arbeitsmärkte in Deutschland. Anhand von administrativen Daten nutzen wir die regionale Variation der Industriestruktur und verwenden Handelsströme anderer Industriestaaten als Instrumente für die regionale Betroffenheit vom Außenhandel. Wir stellen fest, dass der Aufstieg des Ostens in der Weltwirtschaft mit substantiellen Beschäftigungsverlusten in jenen Regionen einhergeht, welche auf Industriebranchen mit starker Konkurrenz durch Importe spezialisiert sind. Regionen, welche dagegen auf exportorientierte Branchen spezialisiert sind, erlebten jedoch stärkeren Beschäftigungszuwachs und eine Verringerung der Arbeitslosigkeit. Bundesweit ergibt sich ein rechnerischer Gesamteffekt von etwa 493.000 zusätzlichen Jobs, welcher dazu beigetragen haben könnte, den Industriesektor in Deutschland zu erhalten. Wir führen zusätzlich eine Untersuchung auf der Beschäftigtenebene durch und finden Belege dafür, dass Handel einen stabilisierenden Gesamteffekt auf individuelle Beschäftigungsverhältnisse hat. We analyze the effects of the unprecedented rise in trade between Germany and the East - China and Eastern Europe - in the period 1988-2008 on German local labor markets. Using detailed administrative data, we exploit the cross-regional variation in initial industry structures and use trade flows of other high-income countries as instruments for regional import and export exposure. We find that the rise of the East in the world economy caused substantial job losses in German regions specialized in import-competing industries, both in manufacturing and beyond. Regions specialized in export-oriented industries, however, experienced even stronger employment gains and lower unemployment. In the aggregate, we estimate that this trade integration has caused some 493,000 additional jobs in the economy and contributed to retaining the manufacturing sector in Germany. We also conduct our analysis at the individual worker level, and find that trade had a stabilizing overall effect on employment relationships.