Is Union Coverage Associated with Internationalization? (WITHDRAWN)

The industrial economics literature suggests that unions impact various attributes of both firms’ decisions and countries’ Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flows. The international busi-ness literature suggests that many factors affect firms’ internationalization decisions. One factor is a desire to lower expenses in a bid to increase competitiveness. The link between union power, which is a determinant of labor costs, and internationalization has not been studied. We aim to fill that gap by investigating the impact of union power on firms’ internationalization decisions by examining 456 U.S. firms for the period of 1992-2008. It is found that firms with higher un-ion power tend to internationalize more.