Economic Reform and Labor Unions: A General-Equilibrium Analysis Applied to Bangladesh and Indonesia
研究了发展中国家工会的存在如何影响经济政策改革的收益，发现被动和主动工会均可增加贸易自由化的福利，并以孟加拉国和印度尼西亚为例说明政策含义。
Noting the trend toward more independent trade unions in developing countries, this article examines whether the presence of unions strengthens or weakens the benefits to be gained from economic policy reform. We show that the presence of “passive” unions—ones that choose their wage-employment contract given the firm's cost-minimizing strategy—increases the welfare gains from trade liberalization, because trade reform lowers the wage premium enjoyed by the unionized sector, reducing a distortion in the labor market. These gains are amplified when the unions are “active”, namely, when they negotiate a contract with the firm that is off its labor demand curve. Such a contract results in featherbedding—paying workers more than their marginal product—and trade reform reduces the amount of featherbedding. The policy implication for Bangladesh—a country with strong trade unions and a protected unionized sector—is that the benefits of further trade liberalization may be greater than otherwise predicted. In Indonesia, where both unionization and import tariffs are low, allowing greater independence to unions may preserve flexibility and reward workers better than the current minimum-wage policy.