I argue that increased foreign competition can affect technical choice and skill differentials even when actual imports do not rise significantly. I present a model of General Oligopolistic Equilibrium ("GOLE") in which a reduction in import barriers (whether technological or policy-imposed)...

I briefly review the empirical evidence in the trade and wages debate, which overwhelmingly rejects the Heckscher-Ohlin explanation for recent increases in OECD skill premia. I then argue that the same evidence is also difficult to reconcile in general equilibrium with the view that exogenous...

This paper models the relationship between the union and its membership as a Principal Agent problem. The union sets wages subject to a labour demand curve. The level of wages is determined by union effort. The union negotiates as a monopoly union. Its utility is a risk averse function of its...

This paper discusses the question of trade union membership. Where membership is not compulsory workers have an incentive to free-ride if the unions only provide collective goods such as wage bargaining.

This paper models the effect of a simple linear payroll tax in a monopoly union model. Previously derived ambiguous results are given a more intuitive interpretation and conditions under which the effect on wages is unambiguously positive are given. It is shown that after tax wages are invariant...

This paper investigates the effects of different degrees of wage setting centralisation on (1) the incentive of a MNE to locate in a host country, (2) the optimal level of investment it decides to commit to its foreign operation, and (3) the host country's welfare.

This paper argues that trade unions have a number of distinct and possibly conflicting effects on wages. This contrasts with the vast bulk of the literature which focuses on estimating a simgl measure of the union differential or "mark-up". We use data at the work-place level for the United...

This paper analyses the welfare implication for a developing country of using union legalisation as a policy instrument to attract inwards foreign direct investment. While its presence may discourage a foreign multinational (MNE) from locating in the host country, unionisation is an important...

Until recently, government procurement bidding processes have generally favored domestic firms by awarding the contract to a domestic firm even if a foreign firm tenders a lower bid, so long as the difference between the two is sufficiently small. This has been replaced by an agreement...

In this paper we examine optimal strategic trade p[olicy under oligopoly with many home and foreign firms when the firms have different levels of efficiency and where a trade-off exists between the subsidy bill and firms profits. The first-best policy involves a structure of firm specific export...