Documents Palokangas, Tapio 4 results

"This paper presents a growth model with two sectors. In the high-tech sector, R&D increases productivity and union–firm bargaining determines wages, but in the traditional sector there are neither R&D nor labour unions. The government is able to regulate union bargaining power. The main results are as follows. Because firms try to escape wage increases through the improvement of productivity by R&D, the increase in union bargaining power boosts R&D and growth. It is welfare enhancing to strengthen (weaken) unions when the growth rate is below (above) some critical level. A specific rule is presented for when de-unionization is socially desirable."

"This document examines optimal capital taxation with wage-setting labour unions when the government taxes consumption, labour, and capital. The results are as follows. If unions can commit themselves to particular wages for a long period, then there is no hold-up problem. Otherwise, the hold-up problem creates a positive link from capital accumulation to the wage. The optimal labour subsidy is positive and greater in the presence than in the absence of the hold-up problem. The optimal capital subsidy is zero in the absence, but positive in the presence of the hold-up problem."

"I examine the effects of globalization in countries where the employed workers support the unemployed and the governments control wages by regulating the workers' relative bargaining power. I use a general oligopolistic equilibrium model of two integrated countries with two inputs: labor and potentially footloose capital. National competition for jobs by labor market deregulation creates a distortion with suboptimal wages. The mobility of capital aggravates that distortion by increasing the wage elasticity of labor demand, which decreases wages and welfare even further. The delegation of labor market regulation to an international agent eliminates that distortion, increasing wages and aggregate welfare."

"I examine how globalization affects wages and welfare in a general equilibrium model of international trade with partly oligopolistic markets. Globalization is modeled as reducing trade costs or opening up shielded sectors to trade. There is a national or international common agency that determines minimum wages for the oligopolists, either directly or through supporting labor unions. The lobbies of employers and labor unions influence that agency, relating their prospective political contributions to the latter's decisions. Both a shift from national to international regulation and a decrease in trade costs promote aggregate welfare, but decrease open-sector relative wages."