We study how incentives for North–South technology transfers in multinational enterprises are affected by labour market institutions. If workers are collectively organised, incentives for technology transfers are partly governed by firms' desire to curb trade union power. Higher union...

We study how incentives for North-South technology transfers in multinational enterprises are affected by labour market institutions. If workers are collectively organised, incentives for technology transfers are partly governed by firms' desire to curb trade union power. This will affect not...

Trade unions are typically able to convert their industrial power into political power. We show that, depending on the parameter constellation, stronger trade unions may be welfare-improving in terms of an increase in aggregate employment and output, if they successfully lobby for lower trade...

This paper analyzes competition for capital between welfare-maximizing gov- ernments in a framework with agglomeration tendencies and asymmetric union- ization. We find that a unionized country's government finds it optimal to use tax policy to induce industry to relocate towards a location with...

Worker movements played a crucial role in making workplaces safer. Workplace safety is costly for firms but increases labour supply. A laissez-faire approach leav- ing safety of workplaces unknown is suboptimal. Safety standards set by better- informed trade unions are output and welfare...

Trade unions are typically able to convert their industrial power into political power. We show that, depending on the parameter constellation, stronger trade unions may be welfare-improving in terms of an increase in aggregate employment and output, if they successfully lobby for lower trade...

A common critique of globalization is that it leads to a race to the bottom. Specifically, it is assumed that multinationals invest in countries with lower regulatory standards and that countries competitively undercut each other's standards in order to attract foreign capital. This paper tests...

We present a bargaining model of wage and employment determination, where we show that foreign acquisitions might hurt the bargaining outcome of powerful unions by giving the fi rm a credible threat to move production abroad. Using detailed data on fi rms and workers in manufacturing, including...

An international oligopoly model with unionised and non-unionised firms is constructed to make predictions about the pattern of international mergers.