Trade and inequality in developing countries: a general equilibrium analysis

Developing and newly industrialized countries that have experienced the sharpest increases in wage inequality are those whose export shares have shifted towards more skill-intensive goods. We argue that this can be explained by technological catch-up. We develop this insight using a model that features both Ricardian and endowments-based comparative advantage. In this model, Southern catch-up causes production of the least skill-intensive Northern goods to migrate South (where they become the most skill-intensive Southern goods). This raises wage inequality in both the South and the North. We provide empirical evidence that strongly supports this causal mechanism: Southern catch-up exacerbates Southern inequality by redirecting Southern export shares towards more skill-intensive goods.     

城市正规就业与非正规就业收入差距及影响因素贡献——基于收入不平等的分解

本文使用CHNS 1997-2006的调查数据实证研究了城镇正规就业与非正规就业之间的收入差距及影响因素。收入不平等分解结果表明,正规就业与非正规就业之间存在显著的工资收入差距,但随着经济发展和劳动力市场供求的转变,两类就业者由于就业类别差异导致的"收入差异"呈缩减的趋势;受教育水平和工作经验等人力资本特征是两类就业者决定工资的主要影响因素,也是他们之间工资收入差距变化的主要贡献因素。     

Trade, wages, and the political economy of trade protection: evidence from the Colombian trade reforms

Worker industry affiliation plays a crucial role in how trade policy affects wages in many trade models. Yet, most research has focused on how trade policy affects wages by altering the economy-wide returns to a specific worker characteristic (i.e., skill or education) rather than through worker industry affiliation. This paper exploits drastic trade liberalizations in Colombia in the 1980s and 1990s to investigate the relationship between protection and industry wage premiums. We relate wage premiums to trade policy in an empirical framework that accounts for the political economy of trade protection. Accounting for time-invariant political economy factors is critical. When we do not control for unobserved time-invariant industry characteristics, we find that workers in protected sectors earn less than workers with similar observable characteristics in unprotected sectors. Allowing for industry fixed effects reverses the result: trade protection increases relative wages. This positive relationship persists when we instrument for tariff changes. Our results are in line with short- and medium-run models of trade where labor is immobile across sectors or, alternatively, with the existence of industry rents that are reduced by trade liberalization. In the context of the current debate on the rising income inequality in developing countries, our findings point to a source of disparity beyond the well-documented rise in the economy-wide skill premium: because tariff reductions were proportionately larger in sectors employing a high fraction of less-skilled workers, the decrease in the wage premiums in these sectors affected such workers disproportionately.     

The welfare impacts of a revenue-neutral switch from tariffs to VAT with intermediate inputs and a VAT threshold

The debate about replacing tariffs with value-added tax (VAT) in developing countries has paid little attention to the role of VAT as an input tax on the informal sector and has overlooked the usefulness of changing the VAT threshold in a revenue-neutral switch from tariffs to VAT. This paper contributes to the literature by addressing these two issues via a heterogeneous firm model of a small open economy with endogenous firm entry and VAT compliance. The results found indicate that the VAT collected on intermediate inputs consumed by the informal sector not only reduces the benefits of evading VAT, but also diminishes the production distortion between the formal and the informal sectors. The use of a change in the VAT threshold to offset lost tariff revenue leads to welfare gains; however, the source of such gains is different from that of a change in the VAT rate. While an increase in the VAT rate expands informality, a revenue-equivalent decrease in the VAT threshold reduces informality. These novel results suggest that the VAT threshold plays an important role in the design of revenue-neutral tax reforms.     

Beyond formal retailing and consumer services: an examination of how households acquire goods and services

The aim of this paper is to show that the acquisition of goods and services through formal firms is less widespread than might be expected. Drawing upon empirical evidence from a deprived neighbourhood, this paper finds that a large proportion of goods and services are informally acquired. In the realm of goods acquisition, informalisation is normally a result of economic necessity and is the first option but second choice of households. In the sphere of consumer services, however, informal modes of provision are often preferred by households and actively chosen over formal consumer services. The implications of these findings for how households acquire goods and services in the wider society are then considered so as to start to open up a debate on the consequences of informality in retailing and consumer services.     

对外开放与发展中国家的收入不平等:基于亚洲和拉美国家的比较研究

本文基于要素禀赋理论,在将劳动力划分为低、中、高技能三类的基础上,选取亚洲和拉丁美洲部分发展中国家1960-2005年的数据,建立非平衡面板模型,分析两地区的开放对国内收入分配的影响。实证结果表明,亚洲和拉丁美洲发展中国家的对外开放确实对国内收入不平等起到推动作用。目前的开放有利于中等技能劳动力相对丰裕的发展中国家,而不利于低技能劳动力相对丰裕的国家。总体的贸易依存度对拉美不平等的推动作用更大,但外资对亚洲不平等的推动作用更大;制造业出口倾向于扩大拉美国家的收入差距而缩小亚洲国家的收入差距。     

Trade liberalization, wage inequality, and endogenously determined nontraded goods

We examine the boundary between traded and nontraded goods as a channel for trade to impact factor prices. In a two-country, two-factor, continuum-good model, tariffs generate a range of nontraded goods. A tariff reduction has a direct effect to expand a country’s import set and an indirect effect through terms of trade to expand its export set. We show that the export expansion can dominate the import expansion, raising the relative demand for the factor intensively used in production. The result is useful in explaining observed rising wage inequality in developing countries following trade liberalization.     

The Salmon-Agreement Between Norway and the European Union—A Welfare Economic Analysis

The relationship between tariff policy and anti-dumping use is empirically examined. Using a panel dataset of 56 countries over the period of 1995–2007, the effects of tariff liberalization on anti-dumping use are found to vary across world regions. For European countries, as well as developed North American and Latin American countries, a lower tariff rate appears to induce more use of anti-dumping measures, which emerge as a protection tool among trade liberalization regimes. In contrast, a reduction in a tariff rate leads to lower anti-dumping use in developing North American and Latin American countries and in developed Asian, African, and Middle Eastern countries. In terms of initiating anti-dumping action, developed countries are likely to be more sensitive than developing countries to tariff policy change in most regions of the world.     

Wage-led versus profit-led demand: A comprehensive empirical analysis

This study investigates various economic factors’ impact in determining the relationship between functional income distribution and aggregate demand from both a theoretical and an empirical viewpoint. We base our analysis on a demand-driven growth model for an open economy that allows for either profit-led or wage-led regimes. Our results strongly indicate that a higher level of trade openness is associated with a lower probability of being wage-led. We find evidence that lower wage inequality makes an economy more wage-led and that countries with a greater private credit-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio are more likely to be profit-led.     

Trade and Wage Inequality: Local versus Global Comparative Advantages

This paper shows that disentangling the local and global dimensions of trade can be crucial to get a better understanding of the trade impact on wage inequality. In particular, it allows us to reconcile the empirical evidence with the Heckscher–Ohlin–Samuelson predictions. Our focus here is on Italy. As for local trade – within its own cone of diversification – Italy is specialised in the production of unskill‐intensive goods, while for global trade – with respect to the other cone of diversification – it is mainly specialised in the production of skill‐intensive goods. On the evidence of these specialisation patterns, we point out that the local trade has a strong impact on wage inequality. In particular, in line with the Heckscher–Ohlin–Samuelson predictions, the local export performance reduces wage inequality as it favours blue‐collar workers. As for global trade, it affects and increases wage inequality through the export channel, again consistent with the Heckscher–Ohlin–Samuelson predictions.     

A Note on Building a Counterfactual for Mercosur

ABSTRACT

Heterogeneity among trade agreements across Latin American countries is important for comparing different experiences and for evaluating the success of existing trade agreements. This note evaluates the Mercosur agreement in a counterfactual framework. Member countries’ experiences are compared to the Mexican experience in several dimensions other than trade. In particular, the effect of trade agreements is evaluated in terms of its effect on the labor market (inequality and informality) and on other measures of integration. This new analysis puts Mercosur in a more positive balance with respect to the pure trade theory analysis.     

Who Supports Free Trade in Latin America?

This paper examines individual trade policy preferences across 17 countries in Latin America. The focus is on whether skilled or unskilled workers are more likely to support liberalised trade and on whether country characteristics, such as factor endowments, alter the preferences of skilled and unskilled workers. Based on the standard Heckscher‐Ohlin model and the Stolper‐Samuelson theorem, wage inequality in developing countries will decrease under free trade and unskilled workers will benefit. We find that on average skilled workers are more likely than unskilled workers to support free trade in Latin American countries. Separate country regressions reveal that this pattern is only statistically significant in 8 out of 17 Latin American countries. However, there are no countries in our sample in which unskilled workers are statistically more likely to support free trade than skilled workers, not even in the lowest skill‐endowed country in the sample. We also find that people from Latin American countries with higher GDP, faster growth, more cropland and a longer period of time since reform were more likely on average to support free trade.     

INCOME DISTRIBUTION,TECHNICAL CHANGE AND THE DYNAMICS OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC INTEGRATION

This paper explores the features of a dynamic multisectoral model that focuses on the relationship between income distribution, growth and international specialization. The model is explored both for the steady‐state properties and the transitory dynamics of integrated economies. Income inequality affects the patterns of growth and international specialization as the model uses non‐linear Engel curves and hence different income groups are characterized by different expenditure patterns. At the same time income distribution is also reflected in the relative wage rates of skilled to unskilled workers, i.e. the skill premium, and hence the wage structure affects comparative costs of industries which have different skill intensities. The model is applied to a situation that analyses qualitatively different economic development strategies of catching‐up economies (a ‘Latin American’ scenario and a ‘East Asian’ scenario).     

正式与非正式制度对中国吸引外商直接投资的影响--以引力模型为基础的实证分析

本文运用引力模型检验了中国的制度变量(正式与非正式制度)对中国吸引外商直接投资(FDI)的影响.实证分析结果表明,中国的关税水平、汇率和政策变量对中国吸引FDI具有正的显著影响,而中国的开放度和知识产权保护程度对中国吸引FDI具有负的显著影响.政府廉洁程度虽然与中国吸引FDI呈负相关,但在统计上却不显著.     

Intersectoral size differences and migration: Kuznets revisited

That researchers look for the inverted-U shape in inequality in the arbitrary periods of arbitrary countries underlies the divergent empirical evidence across studies. To point to the right context for the pattern, this paper establishes a formal mechanism in line with Kuznets' explanation that relates to the industrialization-cum-urbanization phases of closed trade regimes. The mechanism involves an interaction among urban–rural sectoral size differences, agricultural tastes/income, and migration, and predicts an inverted-U shape in inequality in the following way: (i) widening differences in the sizes of urban and rural sectors due to exogenous shocks affect negatively the agricultural tastes/income, worsening inequality; (ii) increasing sectoral size differences and decreasing agricultural tastes/income jointly foster intersectoral migration; (iii) migration acts, in turn, as an equilibrating effect, improving the income distribution. Empirically testing these predictions, non-Sub-Saharan developing countries' data support the mechanism, while data from developed and Sub-Saharan African countries provide little support, as per our prior expectations. This highlights a contrasting evidence on the inverted-U shape across country groups of differing development stages.     

Trade liberalization in asian newly industrialized countries

Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan are often perceived as having achieved similar trade patterns; nevertheless, their trade policies and patterns differ in fundamental respects. In this study, three models are considered and different aspects of the trade liberalization policies of these three countries are highlighted. The model of South Korea underscores the significance of product market concentration in restraining real wage growth and contributing to income inequality. The model of Singapore highlights the role of foreign investment in producing manufactured goods for export and in raising real wages. The factor proportions model of a labor-abundant economy adequately describes the Taiwanese liberalization. The model's predictions of rising real wages and no monopoly profits are consistent with Taiwan's declining income inequality.     

Declining Protection in Developing Countries: Fact or Fiction?

This paper explores whether and to what extent evident trade reform, falling average tariffs and rising exports in recent decades overstate the extent to which protectionism has declined in developing countries, especially low‐income developing countries. It identifies remaining significant protection, especially of final manufactured goods; this being associated with the presence of peak tariffs, escalating tariff structures by stage of production and replacement of old forms of non‐tariff protection with new instruments of non‐tariff protection. It also identifies significant protection arising from high international trade costs induced by inefficiencies in transportation, ports and customs, and from the growth of exports to preference‐receiving, export markets.     

Pro-poor trade policy in Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper examines the presence of a pro-poor bias in the existing structure of protection of six Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Gambia, and Madagascar. We build on a simple agricultural household production model and we propose an extension to include adjustments in labor income. Our approach, which can be implemented without repeated cross-sections of household level data, suits well the data constraints in SSA. It also allows us to capture the heterogeneity in trade protection at the tariff line level. The pro-poor bias indicators suggest that SSA's trade policies tend to be biased in favor of poor households, as these policies redistribute income from rich to poor households. This is because protection increases the agricultural prices of goods that are sold by African households and this effect dominates both the impacts of higher consumption prices and the strong Stolper–Samuelson effects that benefit skilled over unskilled workers.     

The impact of trade liberalization on productivity: Evidence from India's formal and informal manufacturing sectors

Despite a large literature investigating the impacts of trade on firm productivity, there is almost no evidence on how small firms react to trade liberalization. Using a unique dataset of firm-level surveys that are representative of the entire Indian manufacturing industry, I show that India's unilateral reduction in final goods tariffs increased the average productivity of small, informal firms, which account for 80% of Indian manufacturing employment but have been excluded from previous studies. In contrast, the increase in productivity among larger, formal firms was driven primarily by the concurrent reduction in input tariffs. By examining the effect of the tariff liberalization on the distributions of productivity and firm size, I find evidence consistent with the exit of the smallest, least productive firms from the informal sector. In addition, I find that although the decline in final goods tariffs did not significantly impact average formal sector productivity, it did increase productivity among the top quantiles of the distribution.     

Economic liberalisation,gender wage inequality and welfare

The article develops a 3-sector general equilibrium model appropriate for economies with female labour oriented export sector to examine the effects of economic liberalisation policies on gender based wage inequality. It is assumed that there exist disparities in efficiencies between male and female labour due to skewed access to education and health, and differences in their spending patterns leading to differential effects of respective wages on their nutrition. The results indicate that tariff cut may reduce gender wage inequality, but may have detrimental effects on welfare; while foreign capital inflow may accentuate the inequality, despite improving the welfare of the economy. However, government policies to increase the provision of education and health have favourable effects on gender wage inequality but may be welfare deteriorating. Thus, the article provides a theoretical explanation to empirical evidences of diverse effects of liberalisation on gender wage inequality and explains the possibility of a trade-off between gender inequality and social welfare.