Sectoral Shifts and Unemployment in Interwar Britain

This paper measures the importance of sectoral shifts, as against aggregate shocks and changes in search intensity, in explaining the persistent high unemployment that prevailed in interwar Britain. It develops a new measure of sectoral shifts that captures the arrival of information about reallocation shocks by using the cross-section variation in sectoral stock market excess returns over time. The cross-section variation series accounts for roughly one-quarter of the average level of aggregate unemployment during the interwar period, even after controlling for a variety of shocks to aggregate demand, and for roughly one-half of the variation in unemployment, suggesting an important role for sectoral shifts.

The Political Economy of Declining Industries: Senescent Industry Collapse Revisited

One of the most robust empirical regularities in the political economy of trade is the persistence of protection. This paper explains persistent protection in terms of the interaction between industry adjustment, lobbying, and the political response. Faced with a trade shock, owners of industry-specific factors can undertake costly adjustment, or they can lobby politicians for protection and thereby mitigate the need for adjustment. The choice depends on the returns from adjusting relative to lobbying. By introducing an explicit lobbying process, it can be shown that the level of tariffs is an increasing function of past tariffs. Since current adjustment diminishes future lobbying intensity, and protection reduces adjustment, current protection raises future protection. This simple lobbying feedback effect has an important dynamic resource allocation effect: declining industries contract more slowly over time and never fully adjust. In addition, the model makes clear that the type of collapse predicted by Cassing and Hillman (1986) is only possible under special conditions, such as a fixed cost to lobbying. The paper also considers the symmetric case of lobbying in growing industries.

A Simple Theory of Multinational Corporations and Trade with a Trade-Off Between Proximity and Concentration

This paper develops a two-sector, two-country model, where firms in a differentiated products sector choose between exporting and multinational expansion as alternative modes of foreign market penetration, based on a trade-off between proximity and concentration advantages. The differentiated sector is characterized by multi-stage production, with increasing returns at the corporate level associated with some activity such as R&D, scale economies at the plant level, and a variable transport cost that rises with distance. A pure multinational equilibrium, where two-way horizontal expansion across borders completely supplants two-way trade in differentiated products, is possible even in the absence of factor proportion differences. It is more likely the greater are transport costs relative to fixed plant costs, and the greater are increasing returns at the corporate level relative to the plant level. The model also establishes conditions for a mixed equilibrium, in which national and multinational firms coexist.

An Empirical Assessment of the Factor Proportions Explanation of Multi-National Sales

This paper provides empirical evidence that challenges the factor proportions explanation of multinational activity. The same tests on intra-industry ratios and total volumes that were used to demonstrate that a substantial part of trade is explained by factor proportions and income similarities rather than differences are applied to affiliate sales with surprisingly similar results. Some support for the factor proportions hypothesis is derived by comparing affiliate production destined for export to the parent's market, which is the category of activity most likely to be motivated by factor proportions considerations, with that destined for sale in the local market. Affiliate production destined for export home is moderately more responsive to factor proportions differences. However, the two types of activity differ more in their responses to transport costs and destination market income. Overall, the evidence suggests that only a small part of multinational activity into and out of the U.S. in the late 1980s can be explained by factor proportions differences.

Protecting Losers: Optimal Diversification, Insurance, and Trade Policy

This paper derives a portfolio diversification rationale for a trade policy regime that insures returns to nondiversifiable human capital investment. In the absence of complete insurance markets for human capital, the decentralized equilibrium is characterized by excessive specialization. The socially optimal investment portfolio entails diversification for the reasons familiar from the CAPM. By credibly promising to protect losers ex post, the government can achieve the optimally diversified investment pattern. In contrast to previous results, two instruments are sufficient to achieve both efficient reallocation and full insurance when human capital is mobile at some cost, due to the endogeneity of the initial investment decision.

Last One Out Wins: Trade Policy in an International Exit Game

This paper examines the effect of government intervention on the order and timing of firm exit in an international industry with fixed costs and declined demand. A dynamic inconsistency problem arises when the government is unable to precommit to a path of policy: it always intervenes to prolong the viability of the firm located in its market, even when the firm's survival is not the socially optimal outcome. The effect of tariff intervention is in all cases to terminate market operation prematurely, and in many cases to reverse the order of firm exit. Intervention in the absence of precommittment is never first best, and actually reduces welfare relative to the free market equilibrium when the differential between firms' fixed costs is large.

Strategic Trade Policy With Incompletely Informed Policymakers

Ever since the inception of research on strategic trade policy, economists have warned that the informational requirements are high, and unlikely to be met in practice. This paper investigates the implications of incomplete information for a simple, rent-shifting trade policy of the type proposed in Brander-Spencer (1985). We find that asymmetric information undermines the precommitrnent effect of unilateral government intervention. This "screening" effect induces a downward distortion in the optimal subsidy, and it may be so great as to require a tax rather than a subsidy for high levels of uncertainty, given a zero-profit participation constraint. Second, in contrast to the full-information case with strategic substitutes, the introduction of a rival interventionist government reinforces rather than countervails the precommitment effect, by reducing the incentive for the domestic firm to misrepresent its private information. Finally, when a nonintervention-profit participation constraint is substituted for the conventional zero-profit participation constraint to take into account the special relationship between firms and policymakers in trade, the government eschews intervention altogether for high levels of uncertainty.

U.S. Multinationals and Competition from Low Wage Countries

It is often argued that the globalization of production places workers in industrialized countries in competition with their counterparts in low wage countries. We examine a firm-level panel of foreign manufacturing affiliates owned by U.S. multinationals between 1983 and 1992 and find evidence to the contrary. Affiliate activities in developing countries appear to be complementary to rather than substituting for affiliate activities in industrialized countries. Workers do compete across affiliates, but the competition is between affiliates in countries with similar workforce skill levels. The results suggest that multinationals with affiliates in countries at different stages of development decompose production across borders into complementary stages that differ by skill intensity. The implied complementarity of traded intermediate inputs has important implications for the empirical debate over trade, employment, and wages.

Sectoral Shifts and Cyclical Unemployment Reconsidered

This paper examines the importance of sectoral reallocation and cyclical unemployment; in the postwar US economy. It develops a new measure of reallocation shocks based on the variance of industry stock market excess returns over time, termed cross section volatility. Data on unemployment and vacancies is used to establish that the cross section volatility series is effective in isolating reallocation shocks. The series is then used to measure the contribution of reallocation shocks to aggregate unemployment and to unemployment; of varying durations. On average, about 40 percent of aggregate unemployment is explained by reallocation, but much of the variance of unemployment through time is better explained by cyclical shocks. Reallocation shocks account; for a relatively larger share of long duration unemployment.

Are U.S. Multinationals Exporting U.S. Jobs?

Many allege multinationals are exporting' U.S. jobs when they expand operations abroad. This paper investigates the extent to which expansion of offshore production by U.S. multinationals reduces labor demand at home and at other offshore locations, using a panel on U.S. multinationals and their foreign affiliates between 1983 and 1992. The results suggest that foreign affiliate employment substitutes modestly at the margins for U.S. parent employment. There is much stronger substitution between workers at affiliates in alternative low wage locations. In contrast, activities performed by affiliates at locations with different workforce skill levels in the same region appear to be complements. The results suggest a vertical division of activities among countries with different workforce skill levels, where workers in developing countries compete with each other to perform the activities most sensitive to labor costs. When wages in developing countries, such as Mexico, fall 10 percent, U.S. parent employment falls 0.17 percent, while affiliates in other developing countries, such as Malaysia, lay off 1.6 percent of their workforce.