IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/kob/dpaper/240.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Labor-Management Bargaining, Labor Standards and International Rivalry

Author

Listed:
  • Jung Hur

    (College of Economics, Sogan University, Korea)

  • Laixun Zhao

    (Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration (RIEB), Kobe University, Japan)

Abstract

Using the labor union's bargaining power as an indication of government policy on labor standards issues, we analyze the competition between a domestic (North) firm and a foreign (South) firm, and their relationship with optimal labor standards (LS). First, we show that the optimal level of LS is higher when labor unions are employment-oriented than when they are not. Second, it is higher under free trade than under the optimal tariff system if labor unions are employment-oriented. Third, 'a race to the bottom' of LS occurs in the case of wage-oriented unions. Fourth, the North's imposing a tariff to force the Southern government to raise its LS is effective only if the Southern union is wage-oriented. In order to raise Southern LS, both countries may need some deeper form of economic integration, if the North does not want to abandon its free trade system.

Suggested Citation

  • Jung Hur & Laixun Zhao, 2009. "Labor-Management Bargaining, Labor Standards and International Rivalry," Discussion Paper Series 240, Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University.
    • Handle: RePEc:kob:dpaper:240
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rieb.kobe-u.ac.jp/academic/ra/dp/English/dp240.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2009
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Zhiqi Chen & Afshan Dar‐Brodeur, 2020. "Trade and labour standards: Will there be a race to the bottom?," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(3), pages 916-948, August.
    2. Lee, Ki-Dong & Lee, Woohyung, 2016. "Exports versus export-platform FDI with endogenous wage determination," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 479-489.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Labor Standards; Race to the Bottom; Tariff; Economic Integration; Labor Union;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F10 - International Economics - - Trade - - - General
    • F16 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade and Labor Market Interactions
    • J50 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - General
    • J80 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Standards - - - General
    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:kob:dpaper:240. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Office of Promoting Research Collaboration, Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rikobjp.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.