International trade and manufacturing employment in developed economies: An empirical study

Abstract

This paper examines the effect of international trade on manufacturing employment in six developed economies: Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (U.S.). Our empirical strategy is based on the labor demand approach, and the results indicate manufacturing employment is negatively affected by international trade. However, the empirical models in the Netherlands and Sweden cannot fully capture the effects of control variables; therefore, the effects of international trade are not economically robust in these countries. In addition, the results in the U.S. are not robust for different estimation techniques. Further results show that the negative impact of international trade on manufacturing employment is mainly determined by the export orientation policy in Denmark and the import penetration in France and the UK.