Download or read book Impacts of Trade on Wage Inequality Across the United States written by Abigail Montague Cooke and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The research presented in this dissertation examines the impacts of trade from low-wage countries on U.S. labor markets. Analysis explores how imports from low-wage countries influence the wages of workers with high- and low-levels of education and how such trade may be related to growing wage inequality. Linkages between import competition and low-wage imports at the national level are extended to individual census regions to provide some of the first sub-national data linking trade and wage inequality. Standard models of trade impacts by education-skill categories also are extended to capture the influence of task-based characteristics of work. Finally, the effects of import competition from low-wage countries on the likelihood of plant closure are examined. Engaging with the most recent theoretical models of trade, the empirical analysis presented in this dissertation uses detailed microdata from the U.S. Census Bureau. Those data are used to link individual workers to manufacturing plants and firms. The resulting employer-employee files are appended with data on the task characteristics of different occupations and with measures of import competition built-up from individual trade transaction data. The result is one of the most comprehensive datasets yet built connecting measures of trade to the characteristics of jobs, workers and business establishments spanning the years 1992-2007. Analysis of these data yields insights into the socially and spatially uneven consequences of trade. This dissertation finds that low-wage import competition is significantly related to increased inequality, driving down wages for workers with low levels of formal education and driving up wages for workers with high levels of education. The results indicate that import competition increases the nonproduction worker share of total wages within establishments, another measure of wage inequality related to differences in worker skills/education. It also reveals that the relationship between wage inequality and low-wage import competition varies substantially across U.S. regions. Furthermore, this dissertation finds that task intensity measures of routineness, complexity, and interpersonal interaction in a worker's occupation significantly mediate the effect of low-wage import competition on workers' wages. It also finds that low-wage import competition significantly raises the likelihood of manufacturing plant closure.

Download or read book Blue collar Blues written by Robert Z. Lawrence and published by Peterson Institute. This book was released on 2008 with total page 105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book International Trade and Wage Inequality in the United States written by Jeffrey D. Sachs and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Trade Technology and Wage Inequality written by Gordon H. Hanson and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Mexico during the 1980s, the wages of more-educated, more- experienced workers rose relative to those of less-educated, less- experienced workers. We assess the extent to which the increase in the skilled-unskilled wage gap was associated with Mexico's recent trade reform. In particular, we examine whether trade reform has shifted employment towards industries that are relatively intensive in the use of skilled labor (Stolper-Samuelson-type effects). The results suggest that the rising wage gap is associated with changes internal to industries and even internal to plants that cannot be explained by Stolper-Samuelson-type effects. We also find that other characteristics associated with globalization -- such as foreign investment and export orientation -- matter. Exporting firms and joint ventures pay higher wages to skilled workers and demand more skilled labor than other firms.

Download or read book Quantifying the Impact of Trade on Wages written by Stephen Tokarick and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper uses an applied general-equilbrium model to decompose the effects of changes in trade- and technology-related variables between 1982 and 1996 in the United States on the wages of skilled and unskilled labor. The results indicate that trade-related variables (tariff cuts, improvement in the terms of trade, and the increase in the trade deficit) had little impact on the widening wage gap. The major factor behind the rise in the skilled wage relative to the unskilled wage was differential rates of growth in skill-biased technical change across sectors. The paper also highlights the role that nontraded goods play in explaining the wage gap. Finally, the paper presents estimates of how wages would change if the economy moved to autarky. The results show that expanding trade could actually reduce wage inequality, rather than increase it.

Download or read book Quantifying the Impact of Tradeon Wages written by Stephen Tokarick and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2002-11 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper uses an applied general equilbrium model to decompose the effects of changes in trade and technology-related variables on wages of skilled and unskilled labor between 1982 and 1996 in the United States. The results indicate that trade-related variables (tariff cuts, improvement in the terms of trade, and the increase in the trade deficit) had little impact on the widening wage gap. Also, changes in total factor productivity had a small effect on relative wages. The major factor behind the rise in the skilled wage relative to the unskilled wage was differential rates of growth in skill-biased technical change across sectors. The paper also highlights the role that nontraded goods play in explaining the wage gap. Finally, the paper presents estimates of the effect of trade on wages by calculating what wage rates would be under autarky. The results show that expanding trade could actually reduce wage inequality, rather than increase it. The welfare costs to the U.S economy of moving to autarky (using 1996 as a base) are about 6 percent of GDP.

Download or read book Impacts of Trade on Wage Inequality in Los Angeles Analysis Using Matched Employer employee Data written by David L. Rigby and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past twenty-five years, earnings inequality has risen dramatically in the US, reversing trends of the preceding half-century. Growing inequality is closely tied to globalization and trade through the arguments of Heckscher-Ohlin. However, with only few exceptions, empirical studies fail to show that trade is the primary determinant of shifts in relative wages. We argue that lack of empirical support for the trade-inequality connection results from the use of poor proxies for worker skill and the failure to control for other worker characteristics and plant characteristics that impact wages. We remedy these problems by developing a matched employer-employee database linking the Decennial Household Census (individual worker records) and the Longitudinal Research Database (individual manufacturing establishment records) for the Los Angeles CMSA in 1990 and 2000. Our results show that trade has a significant impact on wage inequality, pushing down the wages of the less-skilled while allowing more highly skilled workers to benefit from exports. That impact has increased through the 1990s, swamping the influence of skill-biased technical change in 2000. Further, the negative effect of trade on the wages of the less-skilled has moved up the skill distribution over time. This suggests that over the long-run, increasing levels of education may not insulate more skilled workers within developed economies from the impacts of trade.

Download or read book Causes and Consequences of Income Inequality written by Ms.Era Dabla-Norris and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2015-06-15 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper analyzes the extent of income inequality from a global perspective, its drivers, and what to do about it. The drivers of inequality vary widely amongst countries, with some common drivers being the skill premium associated with technical change and globalization, weakening protection for labor, and lack of financial inclusion in developing countries. We find that increasing the income share of the poor and the middle class actually increases growth while a rising income share of the top 20 percent results in lower growth—that is, when the rich get richer, benefits do not trickle down. This suggests that policies need to be country specific but should focus on raising the income share of the poor, and ensuring there is no hollowing out of the middle class. To tackle inequality, financial inclusion is imperative in emerging and developing countries while in advanced economies, policies should focus on raising human capital and skills and making tax systems more progressive.

Download or read book The Impact of Rising Trade on Wage Inequality written by Jie Chen and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: International trade has been cited as a source of widening wage inequality in industrial nations. In this paper, I investigate how the structure of the wage premium has been impacted within the United States due to rising trade with China. Using the U.S. Census data, since China joined WTO, I find the presence of the skill premium and over time the skill premium is higher. A counterfactual exercise indicates rising U.S. exports to China increase the wages of workers, especially for high-skilled laborers, and the effect is more pronounced in 2010. At the same time, increasing imports from China increase wages of high-skilled workers in the U.S., but push wages down for low-skilled workers. I also find strong evidence that less trade costs dramatically increase individual's wage rates; and the more education he/she has, the more wage growth he/she can benefit from decreasing trade costs. Rising trade balances actually promote wages for unskilled workers and decrease wages for skilled workers and its impacts on wages are falling and become relatively modest in the year 2010. In the end, I conclude that overall speaking, rising trade with China and less trade costs widen wage inequality in U.S.

Download or read book Growing Apart written by Albert Fishlow and published by Council on Foreign Relations. This book was released on 1999 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book joins the debate with a robust defense of the principle and practice of free trade in the United States."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book The Changing Distribution of Income in an Open U S Economy written by J.H. Bergstrand and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2015-06-01 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There have been dramatic changes in the distribution of earnings and income in the United States during recent years. This volume presents original papers, contributed by eminent economists, on the measurement and causes of growing income inequality in the U.S. and other major industrialized countries. The first part examines the definition of income, decomposition of earnings into capacity and capacity utilization rates, and alternative methodologies for estimating income and earnings dispersion. The second part investigates theoretically or empirically alternative causes of income inequality: international trade, macroeconomic conditions and policies, technological progress, productivity growth, institutions, demographic labor supply, and sectoral labor demand. In the final part of the volume policy implications and recommendations are discussed. The volume will be valuable for academic departments (economics, political science, sociology); economic policy institutes and Federal Reserve Bank research departments; economists in government.

Download or read book US Trade and Wages The Misleading Implications of Conventional Trade Theory written by and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Inequality Growth and Poverty in an Era of Liberalization and Globalization written by Giovanni Andrea Cornia and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2004-03-18 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Within-country income inequality has risen since the early 1980s in most of the OECD, all transitional, and many developing countries. More recently, inequality has risen also in India and nations affected by the Asian crisis. Altogether, over the last twenty years, inequality worsened in 70 per cent of the 73 countries analysed in this volume, with the Gini index rising by over five points in half of them. In several cases, the Gini index follows a U-shaped pattern, with theturn-around point located between the late 1970s and early 1990s. Where the shift towards liberalization and globalization was concluded, the right arm of the U stabilized at the 'steady state level of inequality' typical of the new policy regime, as observed in the UK after 1990.Mainstream theory focusing on rises in wage differentials by skill caused by either North-South trade, migration, or technological change poorly explains the recent rise in income inequality. Likewise, while the traditional causes of income polarization-high land concentration, unequal access to education, the urban bias, the 'curse of natural resources'-still account for much of cross-country variation in income inequality, they cannot explain its recent rise.This volume suggests that the recent rise in income inequality was caused to a considerable extent by a policy-driven worsening in factorial income distribution, wage spread and spatial inequality. In this regard, the volume discusses the distributive impact of reforms in trade and financial liberalization, taxation, public expenditure, safety nets, and labour markets. The volume thus represents one of the first attempts to analyse systematically the relation between policy changes inspired byliberalization and globalization and income inequality. It suggests that capital account liberalization appears to have had-on average-the strongest disequalizing effect, followed by domestic financial liberalization, labour market deregulation, and tax reform. Trade liberalization had uncleareffects, while public expenditure reform often had positive effects.

Download or read book International Trade Liberalization and Gender Wage Inequality written by Lisa B. Meyer and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book US Trade and Wages written by Lawrence James Edwards and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 47 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conventional trade theory, which combines the Heckscher-Ohlin theory and the Stolper-Samuelson theorem, implies that expanded trade between developed and developing countries will increase wage inequality in the developed countries. This theory is widely applied. It serves as the basis for estimating the impact of trade on wages using two-sector simulation models and the net factor content of trade. It leads naturally to the presumption that the rapid growth and declining relative prices of US manufactured imports from developing countries since the 1990s have been a powerful source of increased US wage inequality. In this study we present evidence that suggests the presumption is not warranted. We highlight the sensitivity of conventional theory to the assumption of incomplete specialization and find evidence that is not consistent with it. Since 1987, although US domestic relative effective prices in industries with relatively high shares of manufactured goods imports from developing countries have declined, effective unskilled worker-weighted prices have actually risen relative to skilled worker-weighted prices. If anything, this suggests pressures for increased wage equality. Also in apparent contradiction to theory, the (six-digit North American Industry Classification System [NAICS]) US manufacturing industries with high shares of manufactured imports from developing countries are actually more skill intensive than the industries with high shares of imports from developed countries. Finally, applying a two-stage regression procedure, we find that developing-country import price changes have not mandated increased US wage inequality. While these results conflict with standard theory, they are easily explained if the United States and developing countries have specialized in products and tasks that are highly imperfect substitutes. If this is the case, the impact of increased trade with developing countries on US wage inequality is far more muted.

Download or read book Does Trade and Technology Transmission Facilitate Inequality Convergence An Inquiry Into the Role of Technology in Reducing the Poverty of Nations written by Gouranga Gopal Das and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2007 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on stylized evidence showing variation of the Gini coefficient of income inequality across skill cohorts and on the rapid rise in trade in technology-intensive goods, the ripple effects of technology transmission and income inequality are explored in a global Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) framework. An exogenous technology shock transmitted via trade from the United States induces productivity growth in developing regions. This spillover capture-aided by absorptive capability, better governance and institutions, technological symmetry and social acceptance-causes income to increase and income inequality to decline. The conjoined parameters retard growth's inequality-enhancing effect and thus facilitate long-run convergence of inequality between nations.

Download or read book Education Skills and Technical Change written by Charles R. Hulten and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-01-11 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past few decades, US business and industry have been transformed by the advances and redundancies produced by the knowledge economy. The workplace has changed, and much of the work differs from that performed by previous generations. Can human capital accumulation in the United States keep pace with the evolving demands placed on it, and how can the workforce of tomorrow acquire the skills and competencies that are most in demand? Education, Skills, and Technical Change explores various facets of these questions and provides an overview of educational attainment in the United States and the channels through which labor force skills and education affect GDP growth. Contributors to this volume focus on a range of educational and training institutions and bring new data to bear on how we understand the role of college and vocational education and the size and nature of the skills gap. This work links a range of research areas—such as growth accounting, skill development, higher education, and immigration—and also examines how well students are being prepared for the current and future world of work.