Suchergebnisse

We set up a two-country general equilibrium model, in which heterogeneous firms from one country (the source country) can offshore routine tasks to a low-wage host country. The most productive firms self-select into offshoring, and the impact on welfare in the source country can be positive or negative, depending on the share of firms engaged in offshoring. Each firm is run by an entrepreneur, and inequality between entrepreneurs and workers as well as intra-group inequality among entrepreneurs is higher with offshoring than in autarky. All results hold in a model extension with firm-level rent sharing, which results in aggregate unemployment. In this extended model, offshoring furthermore has non-monotonic effects on unemployment and intra-group inequality among workers. The paper also offers a calibration exercise to quantify the effects of offshoring. -- Heterogeneous Firms ; Income Inequality

We set up a two-country general equilibrium model, in which heterogeneous firms from one country (the source country) can offshore routine tasks to a low-wage host country. The most productive firms self-select into offshoring, and the impact on welfare in the source country can be positive or negative, depending on the share of firms engaged in offshoring. Each firm is run by an entrepreneur, and inequality between entrepreneurs and workers as well as intragroup inequality among entrepreneurs is higher with offshoring than in autarky. All results hold in a model extension with firm-level rent sharing, which results in aggregate unemployment. In this extended model, offshoring furthermore has non-monotonic effects on unemployment and intra-group inequality among workers. The paper also offers a calibration exercise to quantify the effects of offshoring.

This paper sets up a general oligopolistic equilibrium model with two countries that differ in the centralization of union wage setting. Being interested in the consequences of openness, we show that, in the short-run, trade increases welfare and employment in both locations, and it raises income of capital owners as well as workers. In the long run, capital outflows from the country with the more centralized wage setting generate winners and losers and make the two countries more dissimilar in terms of unemployment of welfare. Decentralization of wage setting can successfully prevent capital outflow and the export of jobs.

This paper sets up a general equilibrium model, in which firms are heterogeneous due to productivity differences and workers have fairness preferences and hence provide full effort only if their factor return is sufficiently high. With the wage considered to be fair by workers depending on the operating profits of the firm in which they are employed, more productive firms in this setting are not only larger and make higher profits but they also have to pay higher wages due to rent-sharing. This mechanism leads to wage differentiation even if all workers share the same individual characteristics. We use this framework to study worker-specific effects of trade between two symmetric countries. Exporters in this setting make higher operating profits and hence have to pay higher wages than non-exporters. This exporter wage premium provides a source for losses from trade and, all other things equal, makes a negative employment effect of trade more likely. Furthermore, it contributes significantly to a general increase in intra-group income inequality among production workers when a country moves from autarky to trade.

This paper sets up a general oligopolistic equilibrium model with unionized labor markets. By accounting for productivity differences, the model features profit and wage differentials across industries. We use this setting to study the impact of trade liberalization on employment, welfare, and the distribution of income. In particular, we show that a movement from autarky to free trade with a symmetric partner country lowers union wage claims and therefore stimulates employment and raises welfare. Whether firms can extract a larger share of rents in the open economy depends on the competitive environment as well as on the degree of centralization in union wage setting. Finally, the distribution of profit income across firm owners remains unaffected, while the distribution of wage income becomes more equal when a country opens up to trade.

This paper develops a model that incorporates workers' fair wage preferences into a general equilibrium framework with monopolistic competition between heterogeneous firms à la Melitz (2003). By assuming that the wage considered to be fair by workers depends on the productivity and thus the economic success of the firm they are working in, we can study the determinants of profits, involuntary unemployment and within-group wage inequality in a unified framework. We use this model to investigate the effects of globalisation. In a benchmark case with identical costs of entering domestic and foreign markets, there are gains from trade accompanied by distributional conflicts, which have so far not been accounted for in the literature: a simultaneous increase of average profits and involuntary unemployment as well as a surge in within-group wage inequality.

This paper provides an analysis of outsourcing and trade in a spatial model à la Hotelling. In this setting, we discuss the trade-off between transport-cost-related disadvantages and outsourcing-induced production cost advantages of a large economy. The model gives a rich picture of possible trade and welfare effects of a movement towards free trade and points to the role of national transport costs for explaining these effects. Moreover, it gives economic insights in the countries' incentives to lower tariffs and to participate in free trade agreements with partner countries that differ in size and economic capacity.