Trade Integration, Global Common Ownership, and Unemployment Under Right‐to‐Manage Bargaining

Trade integration is usually expected to intensify competition and support employment in unionized oligopoly models. This paper shows why the conclusion can fail when openness also changes ownership overlap. I study a two‐country multi‐sector Cournot–Walras economy with a transnationally coordinated common‐wage right‐to‐manage benchmark. Instead of treating rival‐profit internalization as a free‐form function of openness, the model derives it from a static ownership‐overlap schedule among effective competitors. Under the coordinated benchmark, the bargained real wage is independent of product‐market conduct, so openness affects employment through one conduct/markdown wedge. Holding ownership overlap fixed, a larger effective rival set weakly lowers this wedge, whereas stronger ownership overlap raises it. Employment falls when the slope of exceeds a closed‐form threshold. A bounded nonlinear ownership‐overlap schedule can generate U‐shaped unemployment in the openness index. The analysis isolates an ownership‐based reversal mechanism distinct from technological‐asymmetry channels in existing trade‐and‐unions models.