A Reexamination of the Time Path of Wage Differentials in Taiwan

Contrary to the conclusions of a recent paper by Chen and Hsu (Review of Development Economics, vol. 5, 2001, pp. 336–54), wage inequality and returns to college‐educated workers have risen in Taiwan since 1980. Government policies which have caused rapid expansion of the supply of new college graduates have depressed returns for only the youngest cohorts of college graduates. Older cohorts of college graduates experienced rising returns, as have college graduates as a whole. Young college‐educated women's returns fell more and older college‐educated women's returns rose more relative to their male counterparts. Consequently, the rising share of women in the labor force helped amplify these trends. Changing trade patterns have tended to increase labor demand in sectors that use educated labor more intensively, helping to raise returns to skill. However, in contrast to western economies, rising capital intensity does not appear to have accelerated the pay gap by skill in Taiwan.     

What explains skill upgrading in less developed countries?

Although many developing countries have experienced growing income inequality and an increase in the relative demand for skilled workers during the 1980s, the sources of this trend remain a puzzle. This paper examines whether investment and adoption of skill-biased technology have contributed to within-industry skill upgrading in Chilean plants. Using semiparametric and parametric approaches, I investigate whether plant-level measures of capital and investment, the use of imported materials, foreign technical assistance, and patented technology affect the relative demand for skilled workers. I find that some of the increased relative demand for skilled workers can be attributed to capital deepening. However, the relationship between skill upgrading and the three technology measures disappears once I control for unobserved plant characteristics. These results suggest that plant adoption of foreign technology is not associated with plant skill upgrading.     

Greenfield FDI and skill upgrading: A polarized issue

Outbound FDI is often accused of increasing income inequality in developed countries by shifting labour demand from low‐skilled towards high‐skilled workers (wage polarization). In response, we employ data on greenfield FDI that, in contrast to M&As, may be more clearly linked to skill upgrading. Our data also delineate greenfield FDI by sector, function and destination, allowing us to control for different motives and skill intensities for 17 developed countries for 2003–2005. We find that greenfield FDI in support services, e.g., back and front office services, induces polarized skill upgrading, benefitting high‐skilled workers at the expense of medium‐skilled workers, thereby polarizing wages.     

Heterogeneous Firms in Importing: Theory and Evidence from China

In this study, I explore the effects of the financial status of firms on its decisions to import. The import decision is reflected in various aspects, such as whether to import or buy from home market; what types of goods to import, etc. A novelty of this analysis is that I distinguish between ordinary trade and processing trade, which involves importing inputs to be assembled and re-exported. Several novel patterns emerge. Firstly, a firm’s financial status, especially its liquidity, significantly influences its decisions to import. Secondly, regional financial development also has a significantly affect importing decisions. However, a firm’s creditworthiness and regional factors work independently (i.e., regional financial development does not alleviate a firm’s credit constraints). The findings yield implications for developing economies which demand technological spillovers from advanced markets and those which maintain large trade surpluses with the developed economies.     

The Dynamic Effects of the US Productivity Boom on Australia*

How has the USA's ‘new economy’ productivity boom affected Australia? We consider this question using a dynamic multisector growth model of the Australian and US economies. We find that productivity growth in the US durables sector generates small but important gains to Australia. We find that the transmission of growth is generated through increased export demand for agriculture. Consequently, the USA's productivity growth tends to favour Australia's traditional export sectors. Likewise, it increases the relative demand for less skilled labour in Australia and reduces the demand for more skilled labour and higher education.     

Technology Adoption,Export Status,and Skill Upgrading: Theory and Evidence

This paper develops a model of trade that features heterogeneous firms, technology choice and different types of skilled labor in a general equilibrium framework to explain within‐industry increase in the relative demand for skilled workers. Its main contribution is to investigate the impact of firms' export and technology choice decisions on skill upgrading. Only firms in the upper range of the productivity distribution produce for the foreign market using high‐technology. Since this technology is skilled‐biased, exporters that resort to modern technologies are more skill intensive. Empirical evidence is also provided to support the model's main predictions using plant‐level panel data from Chile's manufacturing sector (1990–1999).     

Trade,technology, and China's rising skill demand1

China has experienced rising wage inequality due to rising relative demand for skilled labour. In this paper, we use a sample of 1,500 firms to investigate the impact of trade and technology on China's rising skill demand. We find that export expansion had a negative direct effect (Heckscher–Ohlin type) and a positive indirect effect (export‐induced skill‐biased technical change) on skill demand; the net effect was found positive and accounted for 5 percent of rising skill demand of the sample firms. We find that technical change in Chinese firms was on average skill‐neutral, but majority foreign‐owned firms experienced skill‐biased technical progress that accounted for 22 percent of the rising skill demand of the sample firms.     

Cost structure,productivity and efficiency of the Italian public higher education industry 2001–2011

In this paper, I analyze the cost structure of the Italian higher education system for the decade between 2001 and 2011, by means of a stochastic translog cost function. I suggest that the judgment about the optimal configuration of the sector is strongly dependent upon the policy priorities set by decision makers. When assuming that the universities’ output is the number of students, scale economies are exhausted, and marginal costs are relatively low; when considering graduates as outputs instead, there is opportunity for increasing the scale of operations. Inefficiency affects production in a sensible manner, especially when assuming that the target output is the number of graduates. Moreover, efficiency contributes to explaining a relevant portion of the productivity increases in the period. No significant scope economies between teaching and research emerge, suggesting that a higher degree of universities’ specialization can be a direction for improving the sector’s efficiency and productivity.     

Capital–Skill Complementarity and Inequality in Sweden

Income inequality increased in Sweden during the 1980s and 1990s, as did the returns to higher education. The main conclusion of this study is that increased income inequality between high‐ and low‐skilled workers is demand driven and is due to the presence of capital–skill complementarity in production. Increased investments in new, more efficient capital equipment, along with a slowdown in the growth rate of skilled labor, have raised the ratio of effective capital inputs per skilled worker, which, in turn, has increased the relative demand (and market return) for skilled labor through the capital–skill complementarity mechanism.     

A NEW COMPARATIVE STUDY ON THE FREE‐FLOATING AND CURRENCY BOARD REGIMES IN HONG KONG

This study aims to compare the performance of free‐floating and currency board regimes for Hong Kong by examining historical data of the two on the output growth and inflation rate. Structural vector autoregression has been applied in the empirical analysis. Without making a strong assumption of unit variance in the residual matrix, this study applies a more natural approach proposed by Cecchetti and Rich to recover the structural parameters. The study has further investigated the recovery of the economy under a demand shock under different exchange rate regimes, in order to provide some evidence to answer why Hong Kong's recovery process after the Asian financial crisis is relatively longer than that in other economies with a managed floating exchange rate regime. New evidence in this study indicates that output recovers much faster in a flexible exchange rate regime than in a fixed exchange rate regime after an aggregate demand shock. Furthermore, this study has applied a more robust method in the counterfactual analysis when comparing the two regimes. New evidence in this study suggests that a free‐floating regime may generate much smaller output variance in Hong Kong and deliver higher output and price levels to Hong Kong.     

Skills,Tasks and the Scarcity of Talent in a Global Economy

The scarcity of talent is a tremendous challenge for firms in the globalized world. This paper investigates the role of labor market imperfection in open economies for the usage of talent in the production process of firms. For this purpose, I set up a heterogeneous firms model, where production consists of a continuum of tasks that differ in complexity. Firms hire low‐skilled and high‐skilled workers to perform these tasks. How firms assign workers to tasks depends on factor prices for the two skill types and the productivity advantage of high‐skilled workers in the performance of complex tasks. I study the firms’ assignment problem under two labor market regimes, which capture the polar cases of fully flexible wages and a binding minimum wage for low‐skilled workers. Since the minimum wage lowers the skill premium, it increases the range of tasks performed by high‐skilled workers, which enhances the stock of knowledge within firms to solve complex tasks and reduces the mass of active firms. In a setting with fully flexible wages trade does not affect the firm‐internal assignment of workers to tasks. On the contrary, if low‐skilled wages are fixed by a minimum wage, trade renders high‐skilled workers a scarce resource and reduces the range of tasks performed by this skill type with negative consequences for the human capital stock within firms. In this case, trade leads to higher per‐capita income for both skill types and thus to higher welfare in the open than in the closed economy, whereas – somewhat counter‐intuitive – inequality between the two skill types decreases, as more low‐skilled workers find employment in the production process.     

Why has wage inequality increased more in the USA than in Europe? An empirical investigation of the demand and supply of skill

During the past two decades the wage gap between high and low skill labour has increased more in the USA than in many European countries. In this paper, the correspondence between occupation and education is used to construct aggregates of skill supply, skill demand and unemployment by skill group that are comparable across countries. Using individual data for years 1983–1994, it is found that the relative demand for skilled labour has increased to a similar extent in the USA and in Europe and that wage inequality remained low in Europe partly because the European relative supply of skill increased much faster than in the USA, and partly because European relative wages were rigid, which caused an increase in unemployment among the low-skilled.     

Is technological change biased towards the unskilled in services? An empirical investigation

I fit a two-sector general equilibrium model to U.S. data in 1963–2005 in order to infer technological processes that affect the college premium. In skill intensive services factor augmenting technological change is slower for college graduates relative to less skilled workers. I find the opposite in the rest of the economy. This indicates that technological change is more complex than what we observe at the aggregate level. The results are consistent with changes in occupational mixes: low-skill workers in services reallocate into computer complementary occupations to a greater extent than college graduates in that sector. Occupational mixes in the rest of the private sector shift in the opposite direction. Thus, theoretical treatments of the underlying mechanisms of skill biased technological change may be improved by taking into account occupational mixes within broad education-sector groups.     

Wage inequality and skill supplies in a globalised world

We investigate empirically, and explain theoretically, how the relative wages of skilled and unskilled workers vary with their relative supplies in open economies. Our results combine the insights of simple labour market and trade models. In countries that trade, relative wages respond inversely to variation in skill supplies, but the response decreases with the degree of openness to trade and is small in very open countries. To reconcile our results with standard estimates of the elasticity of substitution between skilled and unskilled workers, we allow also for the influence of directed technical change and income elasticity of demand for skill-intensive goods.     

Examining asymmetries in the transmission of monetary policy in the euro area: Evidence from a mixed cross-section global VAR model

I estimate the transmission of a common euro area monetary policy shock across individual euro area economies. To do so, I develop a global VAR model in which all euro area economies are included individually while, at the same time, their common monetary policy is modelled as a function of euro area aggregate output growth and inflation. The results suggest that the transmission of monetary policy across euro area economies displays asymmetries, and that, in line with economic theory, these are driven by differences in economies׳ structural characteristics. In particular, euro area economies in which a higher share of aggregate output is accounted for by sectors servicing interest rate sensitive demand exhibit a stronger transmission of monetary policy to real activity. Similarly, even though the evidence is less conclusive, euro area economies which feature more real wage and/or fewer unemployment rigidities also appear to display a stronger transmission of monetary policy to real activity.     

产业内贸易对中国技能 工资差距的影响

本文试图考察产业内贸易对技能工资差距的影响,理论分析表明：它随劳动力条件的变化而变化,在劳动力无限供给条件下它取决于技术劳动力的绝对需求,由于产业内贸易必能刺激技术劳动力的绝对需求,因此必然会扩大工资差距。但在劳动力条件转向有限供给后,它又取决于技术劳动力的相对需求,而产业内贸易未必使之扩大,特别是对两类劳动力替代弹性较大的部门来说,可能会使技术劳动力的相对需求下降,并使技能工资差距收缩。本文基于中国33个产业的5年面板数据验证了上述假说。     

Germany in crisis: the unification challenge,macroeconomic policy shocks and traditions,and EMU

Conventional wisdom blames Germany's ongoing economic and fiscal crisis on the unification shock of the early 1990s and structural problems in labour markets. Challenging this view, this paper offers a fresh assessment that focuses on macroeconomic demand management. It is shown that Germany's fiscal crisis cannot be attributed to unification per se; it arose as a consequence of ill‐guided macroeconomic policies pursued in response to that event. Many structural problems that popped up along the way were mere symptoms of persistent macroeconomic mismanagement and protracted domestic demand stagnation. Arguably, systematically ill‐guided macroeconomic policies of this type are potent enough to wreck any real world economy, no matter how flexible it may be. Because Germany provided the blueprint for Europe's stability‐oriented macroeconomic policy regime, it comes as no surprise that a peculiar repeat of certain symptoms that started to arise in Germany a decade ago may now be observed across the euro area—protracted domestic demand weakness and inflation stickiness because of ‘tax‐push inflation’ in particular.     

Uncertainty and the slowdown of capital accumulation in Europe

The slowdown in the process of capital formation in continental Europe in the 1990s is analysed. Sector-level data from the OECD's International Sectoral Data Base (ISDB) are used. Econometric estimates of an investment function indicate structural instability in the early 1990s and, specifically, a break in the coefficient linking the growth of capital stock to demand. This result neither seems to be related to non-linearities in the relationship between capital formation and expected demand, nor to the sectoral composition of European economies. Evidence is found that the drop in the accelerator is at least partly attributable to greater demand uncertainty in the 1990s as compared with the earlier period.     

Skilled labor, unskilled labor, and economic growth

We study a growth model in which workers with different skill levels are imperfect substitutes. We show that economies with high substitutability between skilled and unskilled workers have high levels of capital, output, and a high proportion of skilled workers.     

Impact of Chinese growth and trade on labor in developed countries

This paper examines the impacts of growth in China's economy and trade on the skill premium of labor in developed countries. We utilize a unique global dataset that disaggregates workers by occupations to identify impacts across labor categories with different skill sets, complementing the widely used GTAP Data Base in the CGE framework offered by the GTAP model. To study the impacts of China's fast-paced growth, we model the counterfactual, i.e., what if China grew and opened at a more modest rate; we then compare this baseline with China's actual growth. Results indicate that a strong rise in manufacturing exports from China to the US impacts output and employment in the US. The US shifts its production away from light manufacturing sectors to more service-oriented sectors that also tend to engage higher skilled labor. There is a small decrease in the real wages of unskilled labor and a rise in the real wages of skilled labor. Interestingly, not all categories of unskilled labor lose, rather those that are more directly linked with manufacturing sectors are impacted; unskilled ‘service and shop workers’ and the unskilled ‘agricultural workers, machine operators, assemblers, craft workers, and others’ observe a small decline in real wages, while the impact on unskilled ‘clerks’ is insignificant. For all categories of skilled workers, there is an increase in real wages primarily driven by the shift in production to services and high-skilled labor intensive categories, resulting in the rising skill premium. Hence disaggregating the labor data provides greater depth on the understanding of the differential impacts on domestic workers resulting from trade, and thereby guides policy on how these differential impacts can be smoothed through redistribution of benefits. Consistent with other study findings, there is a positive impact on overall growth and welfare in the US, EU and Australasia.