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Imports as Product and Labour Market Discipline
Author(s) -
Boulhol Hervé,
Dobbelaere Sabien,
Maioli Sara
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
british journal of industrial relations
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.665
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1467-8543
pISSN - 0007-1080
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8543.2009.00760.x
Subject(s) - bargaining power , manufacturing sector , product (mathematics) , estimation , labour economics , power (physics) , economics , order (exchange) , market power , collective bargaining , business , industrial organization , microeconomics , monopoly , finance , physics , geometry , mathematics , management , quantum mechanics
This article tests the pro‐competitive effect of trade in the product and labour markets of UK manufacturing sectors between 1988 and 2003 using a two‐stage estimation procedure. In the first stage, we use data on 11,799 firms from 20 manufacturing sectors to simultaneously estimate mark‐up and workers' bargaining power parameters according to sector, firm size and period. We find a significant drop in both the mark‐up and the workers' bargaining power in the mid‐1990s. In the second stage, we relate our parameters of interest to trade variables. Our results show that imports from developed countries have significantly contributed to the decrease in both mark‐ups and workers' bargaining power.