期刊名称：Discussion Paper Series / Department of Economics, New York University
出版年度：2007
卷号：1
出版社：New York University
摘要：Globalization threatens ¡°good jobs at good wages¡±, according to overwhelming
public sentiment. Yet professional discussion often rules out such concerns a
priori. We instead offer a framework to interpret and address these concerns. We
develop a model in which monopolistically competitive firms pay efficiency
wages, and these firms differ in both their technical capability and their monitoring
ability. Heterogeneity in the ability of firms to monitor effort leads to different
wages for identical workers ¨C good jobs and bad jobs ¨C as well as equilibrium
unemployment. Wage heterogeneity combines with differences in technical
capability to generate an equilibrium size distribution of firms. As in Melitz
(2003), trade liberalization increases aggregate efficiency through a firm selection
effect. This efficiency-enhancing selection effect, however, puts pressure on many
¡°good jobs¡±, in the sense that the high-wage jobs at any level of technical
capability are the least likely to survive trade liberalization. In a central case, trade
raises the average real wage but leads to a loss of many ¡°good jobs¡± and to a
steady-state increase in unemployment.
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