The paper contributes to the living debate on the controversial effects of minimum wage policy on economic performances, focusing on its impact on firms’ location choice. The question is investigated through a theoretical model, that incorporates features from the new trade literature (Krugman (1991)) and the labor-market literature. In a two-country framework, we model endogenous entry of firms under wage rigidity. In this setting, the impact of an unilateral increase in the home country’s minimum wage is analyzed. The policy shock is shown to have a twofold influence on the relative attractiveness of the home country, simultaneously affecting its relative cost competitiveness and the aggregate demand addressed to firms. The final effect on firms’ location decisions notably depends on the way skilled and unskilled labor markets adjust. Our overall results suggest that the impact of labor-market policies on firms’ location decisions have to be taken into account when evaluating their whole consequences in the national economy.
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Paper provided by CEPII research center in its series Working Papers with number
2007-16.
Find related papers by JEL classification: F12 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies F16 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade and Labor Market Interactions F21 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Investment; Long-Term Capital Movements J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials F41 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - Open Economy Macroeconomics
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Hummels, David, 2001.
"Time as a Trade Barrier,"
GTAP Working Papers
1152, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Department of Agricultural Economics, Purdue University.
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