To integrate with a high- or low-wage country: That is the question

E. Kwan Choi

ISU General Staff Papers from Iowa State University, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper considers the question of whether a country with the intermediate capital–labor ratio is better off forming a free trade area with the higher or lower wage country. Typical analyses of gains from trade ignore the effects of free trade on factor prices. When Europe forms a free trade area with a high-wage economy, the equalized wage rises and rent declines, while the price of the importable declines. Workers unambiguously benefit, but integration has an ambiguous effect on capitalists. However, consumers as a whole benefit from the integration and workers can more than offset the losses of the capitalists. On the other hand, Europe's integration with a low-wage economy raises rent but lowers the wage and the price of the labor-intensive good. Accordingly, capitalists unambiguously benefit, but integration has an ambiguous effect on workers. Again, welfare of all consumers rises and the capitalists can more than offset the losses of workers.

Date: 2011-01-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://dr.lib.iastate.edu/server/api/core/bitstre ... 7dfcc863b847/content
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:isu:genstf:201101010800001108

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ISU General Staff Papers from Iowa State University, Department of Economics Iowa State University, Dept. of Economics, 260 Heady Hall, Ames, IA 50011-1070. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Curtis Balmer ().