IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jeczfn/v143y2024i3d10.1007_s00712-024-00877-8.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Climate change and wage inequality

Author

Listed:
  • Jiancai Pi

    (Nanjing University)

  • Yuhan Luo

    (Nanjing University)

Abstract

We develop general equilibrium models that incorporate an agricultural equipment sector to explore the impact of climate change on skilled-unskilled wage inequality in a small open economy, with a specific focus on the role of the domestic capital market. In the model with the agricultural equipment sector using skilled labor as input, we illustrate that climate change decreases both skilled and unskilled wages. However, its effect on wage inequality varies depending on the discrepancy of the capital intensity between the urban skilled and unskilled sectors. Moreover, if the demand for capital in the agricultural equipment sector significantly influences the capital market, this sector will not only act as a buffer, but also trigger a reversal change of wage inequality. To enhance the robustness of our findings, we extend the model to include considerations of public goods provision and taxation.

Suggested Citation

  • Jiancai Pi & Yuhan Luo, 2024. "Climate change and wage inequality," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 143(3), pages 279-303, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jeczfn:v:143:y:2024:i:3:d:10.1007_s00712-024-00877-8
    DOI: 10.1007/s00712-024-00877-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00712-024-00877-8
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s00712-024-00877-8?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ariel Burstein & Jonathan Vogel, 2017. "International Trade, Technology, and the Skill Premium," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 125(5), pages 1356-1412.
    2. Marjit, Sugata, 1991. "Agro-based industry and rural-urban migration : A case for an urban employment subsidy," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 393-398, April.
    3. Sugata Marjit & Suryaprakash Mishra & Sandip Sarkar & Lei Yang, 2019. "Trade, Inequality and Distribution-neutral Fiscal Policy," Foreign Trade Review, , vol. 54(2), pages 61-74, May.
    4. Chaudhuri, Sarbajit & Banerjee, Dibyendu, 2010. "FDI in agricultural land, welfare and unemployment in a developing economy," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(4), pages 229-239, December.
    5. Rezai, Armon & Taylor, Lance & Foley, Duncan, 2018. "Economic Growth, Income Distribution, and Climate Change," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 164-172.
    6. Das, Gouranga Gopal & Marjit, Sugata & Kar, Mausumi, 2020. "The Impact of Immigration on Skills, Innovation and Wages: Education Matters more than where People Come from," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 557-582.
    7. Nordhaus, William D & Yang, Zili, 1996. "A Regional Dynamic General-Equilibrium Model of Alternative Climate-Change Strategies," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(4), pages 741-765, September.
    8. Ronald W. Jones & Sugata Marjit, 2003. "Economic Development, Trade and Wages," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 4(1), pages 1-17, February.
    9. Paula Bustos & Bruno Caprettini & Jacopo Ponticelli, 2016. "Agricultural Productivity and Structural Transformation: Evidence from Brazil," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(6), pages 1320-1365, June.
    10. Feenstra, Robert C & Hanson, Gordon H, 1996. "Globalization, Outsourcing, and Wage Inequality," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(2), pages 240-245, May.
    11. Dutta, Meghna & Kar, Saibal & Marjit, Sugata, 2013. "Product variety, finite changes and wage inequality," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 610-613.
    12. Taylor, Lance & Rezai, Armon & Foley, Duncan K., 2016. "An integrated approach to climate change, income distribution, employment, and economic growth," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 196-205.
    13. Jacob Moscona & Karthik A Sastry, 2023. "Does Directed Innovation Mitigate Climate Damage? Evidence from U.S. Agriculture," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 138(2), pages 637-701.
    14. Rashmi Ahuja & Sugata Marjit, 2022. "Liberalizing Trade and Capital Flows and the Wage Gap: Does Sequencing Matter?," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 33(2), pages 375-389, April.
    15. Gupta, Manash Ranjan, 1997. "Informal sector and informal capital market in a small open less-developed economy," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 409-428, April.
    16. Arnaud Costinot & Dave Donaldson & Cory Smith, 2016. "Evolving Comparative Advantage and the Impact of Climate Change in Agricultural Markets: Evidence from 1.7 Million Fields around the World," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 124(1), pages 205-248.
    17. Gupta, Manash Ranjan & Dutta, Priya Brata, 2012. "Skilled–unskilled wage inequality, product variety, public input and increasing returns: A static general equilibrium analysis," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 502-513.
    18. repec:hoo:wpaper:e-92-3 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Henderson, J. Vernon & Storeygard, Adam & Deichmann, Uwe, 2017. "Has climate change driven urbanization in Africa?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 60-82.
    20. Chaudhuri, Sarbajit & Marjit, Sugata, 2017. "International trade and quality of labour," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 582-595.
    21. Kalyan K. Sanyal & Ronald W. Jones, 2018. "The Theory of Trade in Middle Products," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: International Trade Theory and Competitive Models Features, Values, and Criticisms, chapter 13, pages 203-231, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    22. Marjit, Sugata & Kar, Saibal & Acharyya, Rajat, 2007. "Agricultural prospects and informal wage in general equilibrium," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 380-385, May.
    23. Pi, Jiancai & Zhou, Yu, 2014. "Foreign capital, public infrastructure, and wage inequality in developing countries," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 195-207.
    24. Ronald W. Jones, 2018. "The Structure of Simple General Equilibrium Models," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: International Trade Theory and Competitive Models Features, Values, and Criticisms, chapter 4, pages 61-84, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    25. Beladi, Hamid & Samanta, Subarna K, 1988. "Factor Market Distortions and Backward Incidence of Pollution Control," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 22(1), pages 75-83, March.
    26. Richard Hornbeck & Pinar Keskin, 2015. "Does Agriculture Generate Local Economic Spillovers? Short-Run and Long-Run Evidence from the Ogallala Aquifer," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 7(2), pages 192-213, May.
    27. Pi Jiancai & Zhou Yu, 2015. "Rural Property Rights, Migration, and Welfare in Developing Countries," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 15(3), pages 997-1029, July.
    28. Avinash K. Dixit & Gene M. Grossman, 1982. "Trade and Protection with Multistage Production," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 49(4), pages 583-594.
    29. Matsuyama, Kiminori, 1992. "Agricultural productivity, comparative advantage, and economic growth," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 317-334, December.
    30. Beladi, Hamid & Naqvi, Nadeem, 1988. "Urban unemployment and non-immiserizing growth," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 365-376, May.
    31. Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg & Nina Pavcnik, 2007. "Distributional Effects of Globalization in Developing Countries," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 45(1), pages 39-82, March.
    32. Mattias Lundberg & Lyn Squire, 2003. "The simultaneous evolution of growth and inequality," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(487), pages 326-344, April.
    33. Jones, Ronald W., 2005. "Immigration vs. outsourcing: Effects on labor markets," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 105-114.
    34. Alan Barreca & Karen Clay & Olivier Deschenes & Michael Greenstone & Joseph S. Shapiro, 2016. "Adapting to Climate Change: The Remarkable Decline in the US Temperature-Mortality Relationship over the Twentieth Century," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 124(1), pages 105-159.
    35. Field, Alexander James, 1978. "Sectoral shift in antebellum Massachusetts: A reconsideration," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 146-171, April.
    36. Reza Oladi & Hamid Beladi, 2008. "Non-traded Goods, Technical Progress and Wages," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 19(4), pages 507-515, September.
    37. Chen, Shuai & Gong, Binlei, 2021. "Response and adaptation of agriculture to climate change: Evidence from China," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    38. Makoto Tawada & Kenzo Abe, 1984. "Production Possibilities and International Trade with a Public Intermediate Good," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 17(2), pages 232-248, May.
    39. Sugata Marjit & Saibal Kar, 2019. "International Capital Flows, Land Conversion and Wage Inequality in Poor Countries," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 30(5), pages 933-945, November.
    40. van Ruijven, Bas J. & O’Neill, Brian C. & Chateau, Jean, 2015. "Methods for including income distribution in global CGE models for long-term climate change research," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 530-543.
    41. Jiancai Pi & Shenyu Shi, 2019. "Public pollution abatement and wage inequality," The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(2), pages 257-275, February.
    42. Sarbajit Chaudhuri, 2000. "Rural–Urban Migration, the Informal Sector, Urban Unemployment, and Development Policies: A Theoretical Analysis," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 4(3), pages 353-364, October.
    43. Dinopoulos, Elias & Syropoulos, Constantinos & Xu, Bin & Yotov, Yoto V., 2011. "Intraindustry trade and the skill premium: Theory and evidence," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 15-25, May.
    44. Hamid Beladi & Sugata Marjit & Reza Oladi, 2018. "Does protectionism harm unskilled workers?," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(3), pages 444-450, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Rashmi Ahuja & Sugata Marjit, 2022. "Liberalizing Trade and Capital Flows and the Wage Gap: Does Sequencing Matter?," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 33(2), pages 375-389, April.
    2. Jonathan Colmer, 2021. "Temperature, Labor Reallocation, and Industrial Production: Evidence from India," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 13(4), pages 101-124, October.
    3. Christoph Albert & Paula Bustos & Jacopo Ponticelli, 2024. "The effects of climate change on labor and capital reallocation," Economics Working Papers 1887, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    4. Gangopadhyay, Kausik & Mondal, Debasis, 2021. "Productivity, relative sectoral prices, and total factor productivity: Theory and evidence," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    5. M. Ali Khan, 2007. "The Harris-Todaro Hypothesis," Labor Economics Working Papers 22206, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
    6. Chaudhuri, Sarbajit & Mukhopadhyay, Ujjaini, 2009. "Revisiting the Informal Sector: A General Equilibrium Approach," MPRA Paper 52135, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Jiancai Pi & Xiangyu Huang, 2021. "Product Variety and Wage Inequality," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 22(1), pages 135-151, May.
    8. Christoph Albert & Paula Bustos & Jacopo Ponticelli, 2021. "The Effects of Climate Change on Labor and Capital Reallocation," NBER Working Papers 28995, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Marjit, Sugata & Das, Gouranga G., 2021. "The new Ricardian specific factor model," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    10. Biswajit Mandal & Sujata Ghosh, 2020. "Communication Cost, Skilled-Unskilled Wage, and Informality," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 18(4), pages 927-939, December.
    11. Pi, Jiancai & Chen, Xuyang, 2016. "The impacts of capital market distortion on wage inequality, urban unemployment, and welfare in developing countries," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 103-115.
    12. Ishan Nath, 2021. "Climate Change, The Food Problem, and the Challenge of Adaptation through Sectoral Reallocation," Working Papers 21-29, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    13. Mario F Carillo, 2021. "Agricultural Policy and Long-Run Development: Evidence from Mussolini's Battle for Grain," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 131(634), pages 566-597.
    14. Ishan B. Nath, 2020. "The Food Problem and the Aggregate Productivity Consequences of Climate Change," NBER Working Papers 27297, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Colmer, Jonathan, 2018. "Weather, labor reallocation and industrial production: evidence from India," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 88695, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    16. Mukherjee, Soumyatanu, 2016. "Technology, trade and ‘urban poor’ in a general equilibrium model with segmented domestic factor markets," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 400-416.
    17. Biswajit Mandal & Sugata Marjit & Noritsugu Nakanishi, 2018. "Outsourcing, factor prices and skill formation in countries with non-overlapping time zones," Eurasian Economic Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 8(2), pages 289-304, August.
    18. Richard Baldwin & Javier Lopez-Gonzalez, 2015. "Supply-chain Trade: A Portrait of Global Patterns and Several Testable Hypotheses," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(11), pages 1682-1721, November.
    19. Sugata Marjit & Biswajit Mandal, 2016. "International Trade, Migration and Unemployment – The Role of Informal Sector," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(1), pages 8-22, March.
    20. Marina Gamilovna Mazitova, 2018. "International Production Fragmentation: Approaches to Measuring," Spatial Economics=Prostranstvennaya Ekonomika, Economic Research Institute, Far Eastern Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences (Khabarovsk, Russia), issue 2, pages 154-169.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Climate change; Wage inequality; General equilibrium approach; Agricultural equipment sector;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D58 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - Computable and Other Applied General Equilibrium Models
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

    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:kap:jeczfn:v:143:y:2024:i:3:d:10.1007_s00712-024-00877-8. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.