Contrary to conventional wisdom, this paper shows that a high‐wage economy can paradoxically reduce its level of aggregate unemployment by engaging in international trade with a low‐wage country. We demonstrate this possibility after introducing a minimum wage into the basic specific‐factor model (with immobile capital and mobile labor), even though the opposite result is known to arise in the longer‐run framework of the standard Heckscher–Ohlin–Samuelson model (with both inputs mobile). Our result provides a cautionary note for public‐policy discussions that promote trade barriers as a way to reduce unemployment.

中文翻译：

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低工资国家的贸易对失业的影响：具有部门特定因素的最低工资模型

与传统观点相反，本文表明，高工资经济体可以通过与低工资国家进行国际贸易而自相矛盾地降低其总失业水平。在将最低工资引入基本特定因数模型（具有固定的资本和流动劳动力）后，我们证明了这种可能性，即使已知在标准的Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson模型的长期框架中会产生相反的结果（两个输入都可以移动）。我们的结果为公共政策讨论提供了警告，这些讨论通过增加贸易壁垒来减少失业。