IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/rdevec/v29y2025i2p831-854.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Exports, skills, and wage inequality in Kenya's manufacturing firms

Author

Listed:
  • Bethuel Kinyanjui Kinuthia
  • Damiano Kulundu Manda

Abstract

This study utilized employee–employer datasets 1993 to 1995 to investigate the presence of export wage premium and its impact on wage inequality within the Kenya's manufacturing sector. Panel estimations were conducted using the Mincerian wage regressions with fixed effects, adjusting the standard errors of estimators to accommodate potential correlation of error terms across workers in manufacturing firms. Additionally, we decompose the GINI coefficient by categories of earnings to get the marginal effects. Furthermore, the quantile regression analysis was used to show the wage distribution. The results revealed an export premium of 11 percent in the manufacturing sector upon incorporating workers' characteristics in the estimations. The export wage premium was associated with workers possessing secondary and university education. Furthermore, participating in the export sector contributes to an increase in wage inequality of 1.42 percent within the manufacturing sector. Moreover, the study found that workers with university education received export wage premium in the lower quantiles, whereas those with secondary education experienced it in the upper quantiles, albeit to a lesser extent, contributing to wage inequality.

Suggested Citation

  • Bethuel Kinyanjui Kinuthia & Damiano Kulundu Manda, 2025. "Exports, skills, and wage inequality in Kenya's manufacturing firms," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(2), pages 831-854, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:rdevec:v:29:y:2025:i:2:p:831-854
    DOI: 10.1111/rode.13144
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/rode.13144
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/rode.13144?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
    ---><---

    More about this item

    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:bla:rdevec:v:29:y:2025:i:2:p:831-854. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=1363-6669 .

    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.