The labor market effects of trade union heterogeneity

Product Market Competition and Trade Union Structure

Trade unions tend to reduce the dispersion of wages among their members. Skilled workers may therefore have an incentive to separate from an encompassing union and organize into a separate craft union. This paper examines a theoretical model to gain insight into the structure of trade unions at a firm. We show that imperfect competition in the product market may drive skilled and unskilled work...

Trade, Welfare, and International Labor Market Spillovers

This paper develops a two-country new trade theory framework with two types of labor (skilled and unskilled) and an imperfect labor market arising from country-specific real minimum wages. It examines welfare implications of trade liberalization and spillover effects of labor market shocks in a global economy. The model identifies two key forces that shape the results: i) external scale effects...

Assessing the Labor Market Effects

S u m m a r y N early 12 million unauthorized immigrants live in the United States. California is home to about 2.7 million of these immigrants, who make up almost 10 percent of the state's labor force. 1 Currently, legislators in Washington, D.C., are considering a comprehensive reform of federal immigration policies that could include the legalization of unauthorized immigrants. Many observer...

Labor Market Outcomes and Trade Reforms: The Case of India

International Trade and Polarization in the Labor Market

The paper builds an argument that international trade can be an explanation behind polarization of employment in the labor market observed in developed countries such as U.K. and U.S. It considers a small open economy, having production sectors which use three types of labor: high-skill, middle-skill and low-skill. The economy faces an increase in the relative price of the high-skill intensive ...