International trade patterns and labour markets – an empirical analysis for EU member states Online publication date: Tue, 25-Nov-2014
by Goetz Zeddies
International Journal of Economics and Business Research (IJEBR), Vol. 4, No. 1/2, 2012
Abstract: During the last decades, international trade flows of the industrialised countries became more and more intra-industry. At the same time, employment perspectives particularly of the low skilled by tendency deteriorated in these countries. This phenomenon is often traced back to the fact that intra-industry trade (IIT), which should theoretically involve low labour market adjustment, became increasingly vertical in nature. Against this background, this paper investigates the relationship between international trade patterns and selected labour market indicators in European countries. As the results show, neither inter- nor vertical intra-industry trade (VIIT) do have a verifiable effect on wage spread in EU member states. As far as structural unemployment is concerned, the latter increases only with the degree of countries’ specialisation on capital intensively manufactured products in inter-industry trade relations. Only for unemployment of the less skilled, a slightly significant impact of superior VIIT seems to exist.
Existing subscribers:
Go to Inderscience Online Journals to access the Full Text of this article.
If you are not a subscriber and you just want to read the full contents of this article, buy online access here.Complimentary Subscribers, Editors or Members of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Economics and Business Research (IJEBR):
Login with your Inderscience username and password:
Want to subscribe?
A subscription gives you complete access to all articles in the current issue, as well as to all articles in the previous three years (where applicable). See our Orders page to subscribe.
If you still need assistance, please email subs@inderscience.com
Our Blog 
Follow us on Twitter 
Visit us on Facebook