This volume was prepared by Benedikt Heid while he was working at the ifo Institute and the University of Bayreuth. It was completed in December 2013 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. It includes six self-contained...

This paper introduces a framework to study the impact of trade liberalization on wage inequality and welfare in the presence of monopsonistic labor markets. The interaction of firm heterogeneity in productivity with idiosyncratic preferences of workers for working at different firms generates...

This paper introduces a framework to study the impact of trade liberalization on wage inequality and welfare in the presence of monopsonistic labor markets. The interaction of firm heterogeneity in productivity with idiosyncratic preferences of workers for working at different firms generates...

I merge the one-sector model of monopolistic competition and intra-industry trade with the Shapiro-Stiglitz model of efficiency wages to show that introducing trade increases employment in both countries. The intuition is that even when employment is held constant, trade improves worker welfare...

We develop a dynamic general equilibrium framework with firm heterogeneity and monopsonistic labour markets, for quantification of the impact of trade and FDI liberalisation episodes. Firms make standard extensive margin investment choices into exporting and multinational statuses. The labour...

Despite the public concern regarding the destructive employment effect of offshore outsourcing, empirical studies of U.S. multinationals find that the effect is ambiguous. This paper presents theoretical and numerical analyses of labor market implications of offshore outsourcing. I construct a...

This paper studies how cross-country differences in labor market institutions shape the pattern of international trade, focusing on workers' skill acquisition. I develop a model in which workers undertake non-contractible activities to acquire firm specific skills on the job. In the model,...

Customs data reveal heterogeneity and granularity of relationships among buyers and sellers. A key insight is how more exports to a destination break down into more firms selling there and more buyers per exporter. We develop a quantitative general equilibrium model of firm-to-firm matching...

In a heterogeneous-firm model with oligopsonistic local labor markets, this paper shows that opening up to trade can affect distortion in such markets. The distortion arises because firms are large and able to exercise market power over their local workers. Using a panel dataset of Chinese...