Will technological improvement and growth in the rest of the world cause a decline in American living standards? Can government policy in Japan and Western Europe limit the availability of high- wage jobs in America? Does expanding trade with Mexico and other developing countries with large numbers of inexpensive workers imply a continuing decline in wages for low-skilled American workers? These questions express a widespread concern about potential negative effects of import competition on domestic labor markets, but ignore potential gains to U.S. workers from exports abroad. Through U.S. exports, the rest of the world is an increasingly large indirect employer of U.S. workers, and through imports, foreign labor is an increasingly important potential substitute for U.S. workers. Bringing together the often diverse perspectives of international economists, labor economists, and policymakers, this volume analyzes how international trade affects the level and distribution of wages and employment in the United States, examines the need for government intervention, and evaluates policy options. In addition to the editor, the contributors are Jagdish Bhagwati, Columbia University and American Enterprise Institute; J. Bradford De Long, U.S. Department of the Treasury and University of California, Berkeley; I. M. Destler, University of Maryland and Institute for International Economics; Richard B. Freeman, Harvard University and London School of Economics; Louis Jacobson, WESTAT; Lori G. Kletzer, University of California, Santa Cruz; Edward Leamer, University of California, Los Angeles; Michael Piore, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Ana Revenga and Claudio Montenegro, The World Bank; Jeffrey D. Sachs and Howard Shatz, Harvard University.

Explains process of importing goods into the U.S., including informed compliance, invoices, duty assessments, classification and value, marking requirements, etc.

Using evidence from public opinion polls Scheve (political science, Yale U.) and Slaughter (economics, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire) discuss the attitudes of American workers towards globalization, concluding that there is a strong division in attitude based on education and skill levels, with less-skilled workers seeing globalization as a threat. The authors delineate globalization and their analysis in purely economic terms as they discuss the public opinion evidence on US opposition to globalization, various economic models to interpret the differences in opinion of the surveys, the larger context of recent US labor-market pressures and how these affect worker preferences. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

Since the early 1980s, the U.S. economy has experienced a growing wage differential: high-skilled workers have claimed an increasing share of available income, while low-skilled workers have seen an absolute decline in real wages. How and why this disparity has arisen is a matter of ongoing debate among policymakers and economists. Two competing theories have emerged to explain this phenomenon, one focusing on international trade and labor market globalization as the driving force behind the devaluation of low-skill jobs, and the other focusing on the role of technological change as a catalyst for the escalation of high-skill wages. This collection brings together innovative new ideas and data sources in order to provide more satisfying alternatives to the trade versus technology debate and to assess directly the specific impact of international trade on U.S. wages. This timely volume offers a thorough appraisal of the wage distribution predicament, examining the continued effects of technology and globalization on the labor market.

The contributors to this volume include numerous members of the trade policy community who analyze and discuss the salient social dimensions of U.S. trade policies. These issues include the effects of trade on wage inequality; trade and immigration policy; U.S. trade adjustment assistance policies; the effects of NAFTA on environmental quality; the role of labor standards in U.S. trade policies; the economics of labor standards and the GATT; issues of child labor; and the role of interest groups in the design and implementation of U.S. trade policies. Chapter authors are Kyle Bagwell, Claude Barfield, George J. Borjas, Drusilla K. Brown, Alan V. Deardorff, Nancy Dunne, Gary S. Fields, John Kirton, Mike Jendrzejczyk, Phyllis Shearer Jones, Edward E. Leamer, Robert Naiman, Gregory K. Schoepfle, Robert W. Staiger, and Robert M. Stern. Commenters are Steve Beckman, Jagdish Bhagwati, Alan V. Deardorff, Avinash Dixit, Pharis Harvey, David van Hoogstraten, John H. Jackson, Lawrence Mishel, Jack Otero, J. David Richardson, Dani Rodrik, Mark Silbergeld, and T. N. Srinivasan. Alan V. Deardorff and Robert M. Stern are Professors of Economics and Public Policy, University of Michigan.