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Full-Text Articles in Economics

Cultural Communities In A Global Labor Market: Immigration Restrictions As Residential Segregation, Howard F. Chang Jan 2007

Cultural Communities In A Global Labor Market: Immigration Restrictions As Residential Segregation, Howard F. Chang

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Economists recognize that nations can gain from trade through not only the free movement of goods across national boundaries but also the free movement of services, capital, and labor across national boundaries. Despite the presumption that economic theory raises in favor of international labor mobility, the nations of the world maintain restrictions on immigration and show little inclination to liberalize these barriers significantly. Michael Walzer defends immigration restrictions as policies necessary to maintain distinct cultural communities and rejects the alternative of voluntary residential segregation at the local level. I argue that we should instead prefer voluntary segregation at the local …


Labor Unions: A Corporatist Institution In A Competitive World, Michael L. Wachter Jan 2007

Labor Unions: A Corporatist Institution In A Competitive World, Michael L. Wachter

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Union membership, as a percentage of the private sector workforce, has been in decline for 50 years. I argue that the cause of this unrelenting decline is a single, fundamental factor – the change in the United States economy from a corporatist-regulated economy to one based on free competition. Most labor commentators have explained the decline by a confluence of unrelated economic and legal forces. Labor economists typically stress economic explanations, which vary from compositional shifts in the job structure to increased competition both domestically and internationally. On the other hand, labor law commentators naturally focus on labor law explanations, …