The issue of low-wage competition in services trade involving posted workers is controversial in the EU. Using Swedish survey data, people's attitudes are found to be more negative to such trade than to goods trade. The differences depend on both a preference for favouring social groups to which...

This paper shows that import exposure affects voting behavior because it affects local labor markets. We develop a new framework for mediation analysis where one instrumental variable is sufficient to identify three causal effects. Using German data from 1987–2009, we find that import exposure...

Using data from the 2006 wave of the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), this paper analyzes how a minimum wage affects employment, wage inequality, public expenditures, and aggregate income in the low-wage sector. It is shown that a statutory minimum wage of EUR 7.50 per hour would cost...

Using employee-employer matched data for the period 1999 to 2010, I analyze the impact of a low-wage trade shock on manufacturing workers in a high-wage country, Denmark, and how they adjust to the shock over a decade. To derive causal effects I exploit the dismantling of import quotas on...

Low-wage subsidies are often proposed as a solution to the unemployment problem among the low skilled. Yet the empirical evidence on the effects of low-wage subsidies is surprisingly scarce. This paper examines the employment effects of a Finnish payroll tax subsidy scheme, which is targeted at...

We model annual low pay transition probabilities taking account of three potentially endogenous selections: two sample drop-out mechanisms (panel attrition, non-employment) and ‘initial conditions’ (base-year low pay status). This model, and variants that ignore one or more of these...

In recent years, manufacturing firms in the United States have faced increasing import competition from low-wage countries, especially China. Does this competition hurt or help innovation by firms? This paper studies the effect of the surge in imports from China on innovation in the US...