This paper explores the impact of "threat effects" of foreign direct investment on labor markets in the United States. In this context, the term "threat effect" refers to the use by employers of the implicit or explicit threat that they will move all or part of their production to a different location, even if they do not actually do so. In this paper, I construct a unique industry level panel data set and I show that the union wage premium has been negatively associated with the stock of outward FDI in the U.S. manufacturing sector for the period of 1983-1996. The union wage premium is chosen as the dependent variable to test the hypothesis that the increased capital mobility changes the nature of bargaining between workers and employers as predicted in threat effect theory.

This study investigates the effects of inward foreign direct investment on local workers' wages by focusing on U.S. manufacturing industries for the period from 1987 to 1992. I use two different approaches to control individual characteristics and to implement estimation in this study: (1) One-step estimation with industry-state level of inward foreign direct investments, and (2) Two-step industry characteristic regression approach. I find that the higher presence of foreign firms is associated with higher local wages after workers' observable characteristics are controlled for in cross-section analysis. However, I did not find a positive association between inward FDI activities and industry wage premiums within industry in a panel data analysis.In this analysis, inward FDI activities appeared to be negatively associated with worker's industry wage premium for workers with more than high a school education.3

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