Some Simple Analytics of Trade and Labor Mobility

Artuc, Erhan ; Chaudhuri, Shubham ; McLaren, John

World Bank Group, Washington, DC

关键词: ADJUSTMENT ASSISTANCE;    ADJUSTMENT COST;    ADJUSTMENT COSTS;    ADJUSTMENT PROCESS;    AFFECTED WORKERS;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-7089
RP-ID  :  WPS7089

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This paper studies a simple, tractablemodel of labor adjustment in a trade model that allowsresearchers to analyze the economy's dynamic responseto trade liberalization. Since it is a neoclassicalmarket-clearing model, duality techniques can be employed tostudy the equilibrium and, despite its simplicity, a richvariety of properties emerge. The model generates grossflows of labor across industries, even in the steady state;persistent wage differentials across industries; gradualadjustment to a liberalization; and anticipatory adjustmentto a pre-announced liberalization. Pre-announcement inducesanticipatory flight from the liberalizing sector, driving upwages there temporarily and giving workers remaining therewhat this paper calls "anticipation rents." Bythis process, pre-announcement makes liberalization lessattractive to export-sector workers and more attractive toimport-sector workers, eventually making workers unanimouseither in favor of or in opposition to liberalization. Basedon these results, the paper identifies many pitfalls toconventional methods of empirical study of tradeliberalization that are based on static models.