IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kea/keappr/ker-20151231-31-2-07.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Globalization and Labor Demand Elasticities: Empirical Evidence from Nine OECD Countries

Author

Listed:
  • Hwan-Joo Seo

    (Hanyang University)

  • Han Sung Kim

    (Ajou University)

  • Young Soo Lee

    (Korea Aerospace University)

Abstract

This study empirically analyzes the impact of globalization on the elasticity of demand for labor using manufacturing data for nine OECD countries. While previous studies focused on the relationship between trade and elasticity of demand for labor, we also consider the effect of international capital mobility. Our main findings can be summarized as follows. Firstly, the results confirm that increased trade has made labor demand more elastic in Austria, Finland, France, Germany, the UK and the US. Second, financial opening, as in the case of trade liberalization, affects labor demand, making it more elastic. We confirm this finding for Finland, Sweden, Korea, Germany and the UK. In the case of Finland, Germany and the UK, both trade and financial opening render labor demand more elastic. Finally, we find that globalization has reduced the share of labor within total revenue, possibly due to reduction in the bargaining power of workers as suggested by Rodrik (1997).

Suggested Citation

  • Hwan-Joo Seo & Han Sung Kim & Young Soo Lee, 2015. "Globalization and Labor Demand Elasticities: Empirical Evidence from Nine OECD Countries," Korean Economic Review, Korean Economic Association, vol. 31, pages 413-439.
    • Handle: RePEc:kea:keappr:ker-20151231-31-2-07
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://keapaper.kea.ne.kr/RePEc/kea/keappr/KER-20151231-31-2-07.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fajnzylber, Pablo & Maloney, William F., 2005. "Labor demand and trade reform in Latin America," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 423-446, July.
    2. Rana Hasan & Devashish Mitra & K.V. Ramaswamy, 2007. "Trade Reforms, Labor Regulations, and Labor-Demand Elasticities: Empirical Evidence from India," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(3), pages 466-481, August.
    3. Greenaway, David & Hine, Robert C. & Wright, Peter, 1999. "An empirical assessment of the impact of trade on employment in the United Kingdom," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 485-500, September.
    4. Michael Kumhof & Romain Rancière & Pablo Winant, 2015. "Inequality, Leverage, and Crises," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(3), pages 1217-1245, March.
    5. Giorgio Barba Navaretti & Daniele Checchi & Alessandro Turrini, 2003. "Adjusting Labor Demand: Multinational Versus National Firms: A Cross-European Analysis," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(2-3), pages 708-719, 04/05.
    6. Jean-Paul Fitoussi & Francesco Saraceno, 2010. "Inequality and macroeconomic performance," Working Papers hal-01069429, HAL.
    7. Holger Görg & Michael Henry & Eric Strobl & Frank Walsh, 2009. "Multinational companies, backward linkages, and labour demand elasticities," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 42(1), pages 332-348, February.
    8. Senses, Mine Zeynep, 2010. "The effects of offshoring on the elasticity of labor demand," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 89-98, May.
    9. Eli Bekman & John Bound & Stephen Machin, 1998. "Implications of Skill-Biased Technological Change: International Evidence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(4), pages 1245-1279.
    10. Arjun Jayadev, 2007. "Capital account openness and the labour share of income," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 31(3), pages 423-443, May.
    11. Dani Rodrik, 1998. "Has Globalization Gone Too Far?," Challenge, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(2), pages 81-94, March.
    12. Buch, Claudia M. & Lipponer, Alexander, 2010. "Volatile multinationals? Evidence from the labor demand of German firms," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 345-353, April.
    13. Blundell, Richard & Bond, Stephen, 1998. "Initial conditions and moment restrictions in dynamic panel data models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 115-143, August.
    14. Burgess, Simon M & Dolado, Juan J, 1989. "Intertemporal Rules with Variable Speed of Adjustment: An Application to U.K. Manufacturing Employment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 99(396), pages 347-365, June.
    15. Alexander Hijzen & Holger Görg & Robert C. Hine, 2005. "International Outsourcing and the Skill Structure of Labour Demand in the United Kingdom," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 115(506), pages 860-878, October.
    16. Daniel S. Hamermesh & Gerard A. Pfann, 1996. "Adjustment Costs in Factor Demand," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 34(3), pages 1264-1292, September.
    17. Raghuram G. Rajan, 2010. "Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9111.
    18. Slaughter, Matthew J., 2001. "International trade and labor-demand elasticities," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 27-56, June.
    19. Krishna, Pravin & Mitra, Devashish, 1998. "Trade liberalization, market discipline and productivity growth: new evidence from India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 447-462, August.
    20. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/46mbanhapncmp6s9g2choh4pj is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Robert E. Baldwin, 1995. "The Effects of Trade and Foreign Direct Investment on Employment and Relative Wages," NBER Working Papers 5037, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    22. Pasquale Tridico, 2012. "Financial crisis and global imbalances: its labour market origins and the aftermath," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 36(1), pages 17-42.
    23. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/46mbanhapncmp6s9g2choh4pj is not listed on IDEAS
    24. Vanessa Strauss-Kahn, 2004. "The Role of Globalization in the Within-Industry Shift Away from Unskilled Workers in France," NBER Chapters, in: Challenges to Globalization: Analyzing the Economics, pages 209-231, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    25. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/5l6uh8ogmqildh09h469j4ua7 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kang, Sung Jin & Seo, Hwan-Joo, 2023. "Validity of the Meltzer and Richard hypothesis under captured democracy and policy regime hypotheses," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 1732-1749.
    2. Young Soo Lee & Han Sung Kim & Seo Hwan Joo, 2020. "Financialization and Innovation Short-termism in OECD Countries," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 52(2), pages 259-286, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lichter, Andreas & Peichl, Andreas & Siegloch, Sebastian, 2015. "The own-wage elasticity of labor demand: A meta-regression analysis," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 94-119.
    2. Andreas Lichter & Andreas Peichl & Sebastian Siegloch, 2017. "Exporting and labour demand: Micro-level evidence from Germany," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 50(4), pages 1161-1189, November.
    3. Sato, Hitoshi & Zhu, Lianming, 2014. "Tariff reductions and labor demand elasticities : evidence from Chinese firm-level data," IDE Discussion Papers 463, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization(JETRO).
    4. Jaanika Merikull & Tairi Room, "undated". "Are foreign-owned firms different ? Comparision of employment volatility and elasticity of labour demand," Bank of Estonia Working Papers wp2014-1, Bank of Estonia.
    5. Olivier Godart & Holger Görg & David Greenaway, 2013. "Domestic multinationals, foreign affiliates, and labour demand elasticities," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 149(4), pages 611-630, December.
    6. Hanan Nazier, 2019. "Estimating Labor Demand Elasticities and Elasticities of Substitution in Egyptian Manufacturing Sector: A Firm-Level Static Analysis," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 62(4), pages 549-575, December.
    7. Sly, Nicholas & Soderbery, Anson, 2014. "Strategic sourcing and wage bargaining," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 172-187.
    8. Njikam, Ousmanou, 2016. "Trade liberalization, labor market regulations and labor demand in Cameroon," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 525-541.
    9. Rosario Crinò, 2009. "Offshoring, Multinationals And Labour Market: A Review Of The Empirical Literature," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(2), pages 197-249, April.
    10. Holger Görg & Michael Henry & Eric Strobl & Frank Walsh, 2009. "Multinational companies, backward linkages, and labour demand elasticities," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 42(1), pages 332-348, February.
    11. Buch, Claudia M. & Lipponer, Alexander, 2010. "Volatile multinationals? Evidence from the labor demand of German firms," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 345-353, April.
    12. Michaela Fuchs & Udo Brixy, 2011. "How important are plant and regional characteristics for employment dynamics? Plant-level evidence for Germany," ERSA conference papers ersa10p243, European Regional Science Association.
    13. Michael Gasiorek, 2007. "Determinants of Productivity in Morocco: The Role of Trade?," Working Papers 716, Economic Research Forum, revised 01 Jan 2007.
    14. Hijzen, Alexander & Swaim, Paul, 2010. "Offshoring, labour market institutions and the elasticity of labour demand," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(8), pages 1016-1034, November.
    15. Athanasios Lapatinas, 2015. "Multinational versus National Firms on Labour Adjustment Costs: A Structural Approach," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 36(4), pages 427-441, December.
    16. Bodea, Cristina & Houle, Christian & Kim, Hyunwoo, 2021. "Do financial crises increase income inequality?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    17. David Hummels & Jakob R. Munch & Chong Xiang, 2018. "Offshoring and Labor Markets," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 56(3), pages 981-1028, September.
    18. Ludo Cuyvers & Emmanuel Dhyne & Reth Soeng, 2010. "The effects of internationalisation on domestic labour demand by skills : Firm-level evidence for Belgium," Working Paper Research 206, National Bank of Belgium.
    19. Kölling, Arnd & Mertens, Antje, 2020. "Exporting behavior and the demand for skills in German establishments," Working Papers 97, Berlin School of Economics and Law, Institute of Management Berlin (IMB).
    20. Admasu Shiferaw & Degol Hailu, 2016. "Job creation and trade in manufactures: industry-level analysis across countries," IZA Journal of Labor & Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 5(1), pages 1-36, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Globalization; Financial Openness; Trade Integration; Labor Demand Elasticities;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F16 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade and Labor Market Interactions
    • F66 - International Economics - - Economic Impacts of Globalization - - - Labor

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kea:keappr:ker-20151231-31-2-07. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: KEA (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/keaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.