Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Economics Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research

Series

2021

INTERNATIONAL ISSUES

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Economics

Labor Market Consequences Of Antitax Avoidance Policies, Katarzyna Bilicka Oct 2021

Labor Market Consequences Of Antitax Avoidance Policies, Katarzyna Bilicka

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

In this paper, I analyze the local labor market consequences of multinational firms reallocating employees across their affiliates in response to antitax avoidance policies. I leverage the introduction of a worldwide debt cap in 2010 in the United Kingdom as a quasi-natural experiment that limited one of the forms of profit shifting—debt shifting—for a group of multinational corporations (MNCs). Multinationals affected by the reform reallocated their employees from the United Kingdom to foreign locations. This affected London-based service sector firms the most. I show that this led to a reduction in the number of jobs available in regions exposed to …


When Labor Enforcement And Immigration Enforcement Collide: Deterring Worker Complaints Worsens Workplace Safety, Amanda M. Grittner, Matthew S. Johnson Oct 2021

When Labor Enforcement And Immigration Enforcement Collide: Deterring Worker Complaints Worsens Workplace Safety, Amanda M. Grittner, Matthew S. Johnson

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Regulatory agencies overseeing the labor market often rely on worker complaints to direct their enforcement. However, if workers face differential barriers to complain, this system could result in ineffective targeting and create disparities in working conditions. To investigate these implications, we examine how the onset of Secure Communities—a localized immigration enforcement program—affected occupational safety and health. Counties’ participation in Secure Communities substantially reduced complaints to government safety regulators, but increased injuries, at workplaces with Hispanic workers. We show that these effects are most consistent with employers reducing safety inputs in response to workers’ decreased willingness to complain.


Trade Policy As An Exogenous Shock: Focusing On The Specifics, Andrew Greenland, John W. Lopresti Jun 2021

Trade Policy As An Exogenous Shock: Focusing On The Specifics, Andrew Greenland, John W. Lopresti

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

This paper proposes a novel strategy for identifying the effects of import competition on economic outcomes that avoids standard concerns related to the endogeneity of trade policy and provides a consistent measure of exposure to trade over time. Conditioning on the level of import tariffs, our approach exploits cross-industry differences in the relative importance of specific rather than ad valorem tariffs. As they are expressed in per unit terms rather than as a share of value, the effective protection provided by a given specific tariff varies with price levels. Using digitized tariff line data between 1900 and 1940, we relate …


Globalization, Trade Imbalances, And Labor Market Adjustment, Rafael Dix-Carneiro, João Paulo Pessoa, Ricardo Reyes-Heroles, Sharon Traiberman Mar 2021

Globalization, Trade Imbalances, And Labor Market Adjustment, Rafael Dix-Carneiro, João Paulo Pessoa, Ricardo Reyes-Heroles, Sharon Traiberman

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

We study the role of global trade imbalances in shaping the adjustment dynamics in response to trade shocks. We build and estimate a general equilibrium, multicountry, multisector model of trade with two key ingredients: 1) consumption-saving decisions in each country commanded by representative households, leading to endogenous trade imbalances, and 2) labor market frictions across and within sectors, leading to unemployment dynamics and sluggish transitions to shocks. We use the estimated model to study the behavior of labor markets in response to globalization shocks, including shocks to technology, trade costs, and intertemporal preferences (savings gluts). We find that modeling trade …