scholarly journals Importing Skill-Biased Technology

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 32-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ariel Burstein ◽  
Javier Cravino ◽  
Jonathan Vogel
Keyword(s):  
International Trade ◽  
Small Group ◽  
Skill Premium ◽  
Large Set ◽  
Real Wages ◽  
Large Share ◽  
Capital Equipment ◽  
Analytic Expressions ◽  
Unskilled Workers ◽  
Skilled And Unskilled Workers

The production of capital equipment is concentrated among a small group of countries, and many countries import a large share of their equipment. If capital-skill complementarity is an important feature of technology, international trade may have important effects on the skill premium through its impact on equipment accumulation. In this paper we propose a tractable framework for evaluating this effect, provide simple analytic expressions linking observable changes in import shares by sector to changes in real wages of skilled and unskilled workers (and, therefore, the skill premium), and quantify the importance of this effect for a large set of countries. (JEL E22, F11, F16, J24, L64)

Internal Geography, Labor Mobility, and the Distributional Impacts of Trade

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 252-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jingting Fan
Keyword(s):  
International Trade ◽  
Skill Premium ◽  
Domestic Economy ◽  
Spatial Equilibrium ◽  
Spatial Equilibrium Model ◽  
Unskilled Workers ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Migration Costs ◽  
Skilled And Unskilled Workers ◽  
Distributional Impacts

I develop a spatial-equilibrium model to quantify the distributional impacts of international trade in an economy with intranational trade and migration costs. Focusing on China, I find that international trade increases both between-region inequality among workers with similar skills and within-region inequality between skilled and unskilled workers, with the former accounting for 75 percent of the overall inequality increase. Ignoring spatial frictions will underestimate trade’s impact on the overall inequality and overestimate its impact on the aggregate skill premium. I further study how internal trade and Hukou reforms affect the domestic economy and the impacts of international trade. (JEL F14, F16, J24, O18, P23, P33, R12)

Were Wages That Low? Real Wages in the Strasbourg Region Before 1775

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 511-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent Geloso
Keyword(s):  
Agricultural Sector ◽  
Real Wages ◽  
Southern England ◽  
Unskilled Workers ◽  
Per Se ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Skilled And Unskilled Workers

Robert Allen characterized the region of Strasbourg in France in the period before 1789 as exceptionally poor. New evidence suggests, however, that Allen underestimated wage levels because of a failure to include payments in-kind and to clarify the differences between skilled and unskilled workers. Moreover, his wages came from a region that is wider than Strasbourg per se. The use of wage data for the agricultural sector that were higher in nominal terms than Allen’s, with reference to regions like Paris and southern England, elevates the economic standing of Strasbourg and, by extension, that of France.

scholarly journals THE NORTH–SOUTH DIVIDE: REAL WAGES AND WELFARE IN BRAZIL DURING THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 185-214
Author(s):  
Thales Augusto Zamberlan Pereira
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Regional Inequality ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Real Wages ◽  
State Information ◽  
The North ◽  
Unskilled Workers ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Skilled And Unskilled Workers

ABSTRACTWhat was the degree of Brazil's regional inequality in living standards during the first decades of the 20th century? This paper presents municipal and state information on wages and prices in order to build welfare ratios for skilled and unskilled workers between 1912 and 1940. Despite the significant differences in nominal wages and costs of living throughout the country, real wage differentials remained lower than those estimated by earlier studies. Williamson (1999) argued that real wages in the Southeast were approximately six times higher than in the Northeast during the 1930s. The new evidence in this paper suggests that wages were on average only 1.5 times higher.

scholarly journals Unpacking Skill Bias: Automation and New Tasks

2020 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 356-361
Author(s):  
Daron Acemoglu ◽  
Pascual Restrepo
Keyword(s):  
Technical Change ◽  
Canonical Model ◽  
Skill Premium ◽  
Real Wages ◽  
Skill Bias ◽  
The Past ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Unskilled Workers ◽  
Productivity Gains ◽  
Industry Level Data

We extend the canonical model of skill-biased technical change by modeling the allocation of tasks to factors and allowing for automation and the creation of new tasks. In our model, factor prices depend on the set of tasks they perform. Automation can reduce real wages and generate sizable changes in inequality associated with small productivity gains. New tasks can increase or reduce inequality depending on whether they are performed by skilled or unskilled workers. Industry-level data suggest that automation significantly contributed to the rising skill premium, while new tasks reduced inequality in the past but have contributed to inequality recently.

War and the Working Class: The Case of Düsseldorf 1914–1918

1985 ◽  
Vol 18 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 257-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth H. Tobin
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Work Force ◽  
Relative Importance ◽  
Real Wages ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Unskilled Workers ◽  
German Revolution ◽  
Insufficient Knowledge ◽  
Skilled And Unskilled Workers

The causes of any revolution are notoriously hard to discover. Despite years of effort, historians still disagree about the relative importance of the short-term and long-term causes of the German revolution in 1918–19. Some describe the “events” at the end of the war as a largely unrevolutionary desire for peace and food, brought about by the privations of the war years; others explain them as the culmination of decades of escalating class conflicts, which the conditions of war sharply exposed. One problem with this whole debate has been an insufficient knowledge of exactly what happened to Germany's workers during the war. Although most historians agree that money wages went up, real wages declined and most people ate less, few have been able to gauge the extent or importance of the change in wages or determine whether workers were simply somewhat hungry, malnourished, or starving. Furthermore there is not enough known about the composition of the work force during the war and the different hardships endured by skilled and unskilled workers.

scholarly journals Trade-Induced Structural Change and the Skill Premium

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Javier Cravino ◽  
Sebastian Sotelo
Keyword(s):  
International Trade ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Real Income ◽  
Skill Premium ◽  
Relative Wage ◽  
Unskilled Labor ◽  
Manufacturing Employment ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Trade Model ◽  
Unskilled Workers

We study how international trade affects manufacturing employment and the relative wage of unskilled workers when goods and services are traded with different intensities. Manufacturing trade reduces manufacturing prices worldwide, which reduces manufacturing employment if manufactures and services are complements. International trade also raises real income, which reduces manufacturing employment if services are more income elastic than manufactures. Manufacturing production is unskilled-labor-intensive, so that these changes increase the skill premium. We incorporate these mechanisms in a quantitative trade model and show that reductions in trade costs had a negative impact on manufacturing employment and the relative wage of unskilled workers. (JEL F16, J24, J31, L60)

scholarly journals Real Urban Wage in an Agricultural Economy Without Landless Farmers: Serbia 1862-1910

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boško Mijatović ◽  
Branko Milanovic
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Agricultural Economy ◽  
Modest Increase ◽  
Working Paper ◽  
Agricultural Societies ◽  
Unskilled Workers ◽  
Skilled And Unskilled Workers

The paper presents the first estimate of the welfare ratio for Serbia using the 19th and early 20th century data on wages of skilled and unskilled workers (including the part paid in kind) and prices of goods that enter into “subsistence” and “respectability” consumption baskets. It finds a stagnation of unskilled wage close to the welfare ratio of 1, and a modest increase in skilled wage. The paper introduces several adjustments to conventional methodology in order to make it more relevant for predominantly agricultural societies. (Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality Working Paper)

scholarly journals Does Plant Size Matter? Differential Effects of Foreign Direct Investment on Wages and Employment in Indian Manufacturing

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shruti Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Direct Investment ◽  
Direct Investment ◽  
Critical Mass ◽  
Regional Analysis ◽  
Spillover Effects ◽  
Indian States ◽  
Differential Effects ◽  
Unskilled Workers ◽  
Size Matter ◽  
Skilled And Unskilled Workers

This paper examines the differential effects, based on the size of the plant, of industry-level foreign direct investment (FDI) on plant-level employment and the wages of skilled and unskilled workers in India's manufacturing sector. On average, there are strong positive differential effects of increased inward-level FDI for large plants relative to small and average-sized plants in terms of employment and the average wages of both skilled and unskilled workers. Small plants experience negative effects from inward FDI, which can be explained by intra-industry reallocation of output from smaller to larger plants. After conducting a regional analysis, I find positive spillovers to small plants in Indian states that receive large and persistent flows of FDI. This suggests that a critical mass of FDI is necessary for small plants to experience positive spillover effects.

“Go Work Over There and Come Do Something Here”

On the Move ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Filiz Garip
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Short Duration ◽  
Relative Size ◽  
The United States ◽  
Real Wages ◽  
Large Share ◽  
Household Heads ◽  
Migrant Stream ◽  
Over Time

This chapter discusses a particular group that dominated the migrant stream from Mexico to the United States in 1965. The group contained a large share of men—many of them household heads who were married with children—from rural central-western communities in Mexico. Migrants in the group typically had little education, worked in agriculture in both Mexico and the United States, and took multiple trips of short duration. This group is referred to as circular migrants. Circular migrants declined both in absolute numbers and in relative size over time, accounting for less than 10 percent of new migrants by 2010. Circular migrants declined in numbers as incomes in Mexico rose, real wages in the United States fell, and the budget dedicated to securing the border grew exponentially between 1965 and 2010.

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