Inter-Industry Labor Mobility and Lobbying for Trade Protection

摘要

This article investigates how inter-industry labor mobility affects industry lobbying for trade protection when foreign multinationals increase production and sales in the U.S. The level of inter-industry labor mobility is a critical issue to an industry because investment-receiving sectors draw labor from the rest of the economy, thus reducing the supply or increasing the price of labor available to an industry. I hypothesize that sectors employing less sector-specific labor will be more likely to lobby for trade protection when investment-receiving sectors draw labor to expand production, ceteris paribus. An empirical test confirms my hypothesis.