IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/inecon/v92y2014i2p317-329.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Unobservable skill dispersion and comparative advantage

Author

Listed:
  • Bombardini, Matilde
  • Gallipoli, Giovanni
  • Pupato, Germán

Abstract

This paper investigates a theoretical mechanism linking comparative advantage to the distribution of skills in the working population. We develop a tractable multi-country, multi-industry model of trade with unobservable skills in the labour market and show that comparative advantage derives from (i) cross-industry differences in the substitutability of workers' skills and (ii) cross-country differences in the dispersion of skills. We establish the conditions under which higher skill dispersion leads to specialization in industries characterized by higher skill substitutability across tasks. The main results are robust when the model is extended to allow for partial observability of skills. Finally, we use distributions of literacy scores from the International Adult Literacy Survey to approximate cross-country productivity differences due to skill dispersion and we carry out a quantitative assessment of the impact of skill dispersion on the pattern of trade.

Suggested Citation

  • Bombardini, Matilde & Gallipoli, Giovanni & Pupato, Germán, 2014. "Unobservable skill dispersion and comparative advantage," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(2), pages 317-329.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:inecon:v:92:y:2014:i:2:p:317-329
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2013.11.005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002219961300113X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jinteco.2013.11.005?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Matilde Bombardini & Giovanni Gallipoli & German Pupato, 2012. "Skill Dispersion and Trade Flows," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(5), pages 2327-2348, August.
    2. Giovanni Maggi & Gene M. Grossman, 2000. "Diversity and Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(5), pages 1255-1275, December.
    3. Arnaud Costinot & Jonathan Vogel, 2010. "Matching and Inequality in the World Economy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(4), pages 747-786, August.
    4. Benabou, Roland, 2005. "Inequality, Technology and the Social Contract," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 25, pages 1595-1638, Elsevier.
    5. Spiros Bougheas & Raymond Riezman, 2013. "Trade and the distribution of human capital," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Raymond Riezman (ed.), International Trade Agreements and Political Economy, chapter 20, pages 395-407, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    6. Michael Kremer, 1993. "The O-Ring Theory of Economic Development," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 108(3), pages 551-575.
    7. Ross, Stephen A, 1981. "Some Stronger Measures of Risk Aversion in the Small and the Large with Applications," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(3), pages 621-638, May.
    8. Elhanan Helpman & Oleg Itskhoki & Stephen Redding, 2010. "Inequality and Unemployment in a Global Economy," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 78(4), pages 1239-1283, July.
    9. John Romalis, 2004. "Factor Proportions and the Structure of Commodity Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(1), pages 67-97, March.
    10. Chang‐Tai Hsieh & Erik Hurst & Charles I. Jones & Peter J. Klenow, 2019. "The Allocation of Talent and U.S. Economic Growth," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 87(5), pages 1439-1474, September.
    11. Gene M. Grossman, 2004. "The Distribution of Talent and the Pattern and Consequences of International Trade," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(1), pages 209-239, February.
    12. Arnaud Costinot & Dave Donaldson & Ivana Komunjer, 2012. "What Goods Do Countries Trade? A Quantitative Exploration of Ricardo's Ideas," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(2), pages 581-608.
    13. Franziska Ohnsorge & Daniel Trefler, 2007. "Sorting It Out: International Trade with Heterogeneous Workers," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(5), pages 868-892, October.
    14. George A. Akerlof, 1970. "The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 84(3), pages 488-500.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zhou, Ying & Fan, Zhaobin & Anwar, Sajid, 2023. "Birthplace diversity of immigrants, capabilities and export structure transformation," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    2. Brant Abbott & Giovanni Gallipoli, 2017. "Human Capital Spillovers and the Geography of Intergenerational Mobility," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 25, pages 208-233, April.
    3. Gene Grossman, 2013. "Heterogeneous workers and international trade," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 149(2), pages 211-245, June.
    4. Gianluca Orefice & Hillel Rapoport & Gianluca Santoni, 2021. "How Do Immigrants Promote Exports?," Working Papers 2021-06, CEPII research center.
    5. Parrotta, Pierpaolo & Pozzoli, Dario & Sala, Davide, 2016. "Ethnic diversity and firms' export behavior," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 248-263.
    6. Gianluca Orefice & Hillel Rapoport & Gianluca Santoni, 2021. "How Do Immigrants Promote Exports? Networks, Knowledge, Diversity," CESifo Working Paper Series 9288, CESifo.
    7. Parrotta, Pierpaolo & Pozzoli, Dario & Pytlikova, Mariola, 2014. "Labor diversity and firm productivity," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 144-179.
    8. Blanchard, Emily & Willmann, Gerald, 2016. "Trade, education, and the shrinking middle class," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 263-278.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Matilde Bombardini & Giovanni Gallipoli & German Pupato, 2012. "Skill Dispersion and Trade Flows," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(5), pages 2327-2348, August.
    2. Gene Grossman, 2013. "Heterogeneous workers and international trade," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 149(2), pages 211-245, June.
    3. Arnaud Costinot & Jonathan Vogel, 2010. "Matching and Inequality in the World Economy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(4), pages 747-786, August.
    4. Sampson, Thomas, 2016. "Assignment reversals: Trade, skill allocation and wage inequality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 365-409.
    5. Liu, Runjuan & Trefler, Daniel, 2019. "A sorted tale of globalization: White collar jobs and the rise of service offshoring," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 105-122.
    6. Nunn, Nathan & Trefler, Daniel, 2014. "Domestic Institutions as a Source of Comparative Advantage," Handbook of International Economics, in: Gopinath, G. & Helpman, . & Rogoff, K. (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 0, pages 263-315, Elsevier.
    7. Pao-Li Chang & Fali Huang, 2010. "Trade and Divergence in Education Systems," Working Papers 33-2010, Singapore Management University, School of Economics.
    8. Cebreros Alfonso, 2018. "Labor Heterogeneity and the Pattern of Trade," Working Papers 2018-01, Banco de México.
    9. Cheng‐Te Lee & Shang‐Fen Wu, 2023. "Technology advantage, terms of trade, and pattern of trade," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 19(1), pages 166-174, March.
    10. Sly, Nicholas, 2010. "Skill Acquisition, Incentive Contracts and Jobs: Labor Market Adjustment to Trade," MPRA Paper 25004, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Davidson, Carl & Heyman, Fredrik & Matusz, Steven & Sjöholm, Fredrik & Zhu, Susan Chun, 2014. "Globalization and imperfect labor market sorting," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(2), pages 177-194.
    12. Blanchard, Emily & Willmann, Gerald, 2016. "Trade, education, and the shrinking middle class," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 263-278.
    13. Arnaud Costinot & Jonathan Vogel & Su Wang, 2013. "An Elementary Theory of Global Supply Chains," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 80(1), pages 109-144.
    14. Davidson, Carl & Matusz, Steven J., 2012. "A model of globalization and firm-worker matching: How good is good enough?," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 5-15.
    15. Asuyama, Yoko, 2012. "Skill Distribution and Comparative Advantage: A Comparison of China and India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(5), pages 956-969.
    16. Spiros Bougheas & Raymond Riezman, 2010. "Market Entry Costs, Underemployment and International Trade," CESifo Working Paper Series 3263, CESifo.
    17. Kuo-Hsing Kuo & Cheng-Te Lee, 2018. "Technology Advantage, Heterogeneous Talent And Trade," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 63(05), pages 1307-1317, December.
    18. Pranab Bardhan & Dilip Mookherjee & Masatoshi Tsumagari, 2013. "Middlemen Margins and Globalization," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(4), pages 81-119, November.
    19. Grossman, Gene M. & Helpman, Elhanan & Kircher, Philipp, 2013. "Matching and Sorting in a Global Economy," SIRE Discussion Papers 2013-69, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
    20. Heiland, Inga & Kohler, Wilhelm, 2022. "Heterogeneous workers, trade, and migration," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Substitutability; Skill dispersion; Skill distribution;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F12 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies; Fragmentation
    • F16 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade and Labor Market Interactions
    • J82 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Standards - - - Labor Force Composition

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:inecon:v:92:y:2014:i:2:p:317-329. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505552 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.