DOES NATIONALITY OF OWNERSHIP MATTER FOR LABOR DEMANDS?

Do multinational firms exhibit different patterns of labor demand from purely domestic firms? Many standard models of trade and multinational companies suggest one such difference may be labor-demand elasticities. For several reasons, multinationals may have more-elastic labor demands than do purely domestic firms. In this paper we discuss the theory issues involved. We then present industry-level evidence that, for U.K. and U.S. manufacturing, labor demand for less-skilled labor has become more elastic in recent decades-a period in which for both countries multinational activity has expanded.