IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bsl/wpaper/2012-08.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Skill-Biased Technological Change and the Real Exchange Rate

Author

Listed:
  • Gubler, Matthias
  • Sax, Christoph

    (University of Basel)

Abstract

We sketch a model that shows how skill-biased technological change may reverse the classic Balassa-Samuelson effect, leading to a negative relationship between the productivity in the tradable sector and the real exchange rate. In a small open economy, export goods are produced with capital, high-skilled and low-skilled labor, and traded for imported consumption goods. Non-tradable services are produced with low-skilled labor only. A rise in the productivity of capital has two effects: (1) It may reduce the demand for labor in the tradable sector if the substitutability of low-skilled labor and capital in the tradable sector is high; and (2) it increases the demand for non-tradables and its labor input. Overall demand for low-skilled labor declines if the labor force of the tradable sector is large relative to the labor force of the non-tradable sector. This leads to lower wages and thus to lower prices and a real exchange rate depreciation.

Suggested Citation

  • Gubler, Matthias & Sax, Christoph, 2012. "Skill-Biased Technological Change and the Real Exchange Rate," Working papers 2012/08, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    • Handle: RePEc:bsl:wpaper:2012/08
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://edoc.unibas.ch/61599/1/20180307162006_5aa00326b31ef.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bordo, Michael D. & Choudhri, Ehsan U. & Fazio, Giorgio & MacDonald, Ronald, 2017. "The real exchange rate in the long run: Balassa-Samuelson effects reconsidered," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 69-92.
    2. Kenneth Rogoff, 1996. "The Purchasing Power Parity Puzzle," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 34(2), pages 647-668, June.
    3. Jean-Marc Natal & Tommaso Mancini Griffoli & Christoph Meyer & Attilio Zanetti, 2015. "Determinants of the Swiss Franc Real Exchange Rate," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 151(IV), pages 299-331, December.
    4. Bela Balassa, 1964. "The Purchasing-Power Parity Doctrine: A Reappraisal," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 72(6), pages 584-584.
    5. Konrad Adler & Dr. Christian Grisse, 2014. "Real exchange rates and fundamentals: robustness across alternative model specifications," Working Papers 2014-07, Swiss National Bank.
    6. Michael J. Boskin & Lawrence J. Lau, 2000. "Generalized Solow-Neutral Technical Progress and Postwar Economic Growth," NBER Working Papers 8023, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Matthias Gubler & Christoph Sax, 2019. "The Balassa-Samuelson effect reversed: new evidence from OECD countries," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Springer;Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, vol. 155(1), pages 1-21, December.
    8. Devereux, Michael B, 1999. "Real Exchange Rate Trends and Growth: A Model of East Asia," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(3), pages 509-521, August.
    9. Ehsan U. Choudhri & Lawrence L. Schembri, 2010. "Productivity, the Terms of Trade, and the Real Exchange Rate: Balassa–Samuelson Hypothesis Revisited," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(5), pages 924-936, November.
    10. Menzie Chinn & Louis Johnston, 1996. "Real Exchange Rate Levels, Productivity and Demand Shocks: Evidence from a Panel of 14 Countries," NBER Working Papers 5709, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. John Duffy & Chris Papageorgiou & Fidel Perez-Sebastian, 2004. "Capital-Skill Complementarity? Evidence from a Panel of Countries," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(1), pages 327-344, February.
    12. Gianluca Benigno & Christoph Thoenissen, 2003. "Equilibrium Exchange Rates and Supply-Side Performance," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(486), pages 103-124, March.
    13. David H. Autor & David Dorn, 2013. "The Growth of Low-Skill Service Jobs and the Polarization of the US Labor Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(5), pages 1553-1597, August.
    14. Jonas D. M. Fisher, 2006. "The Dynamic Effects of Neutral and Investment-Specific Technology Shocks," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 114(3), pages 413-451, June.
    15. Claudia Goldin & Lawrence F. Katz, 1998. "The Origins of Technology-Skill Complementarity," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(3), pages 693-732.
    16. James, John A. & Skinner, Jonathan S., 1985. "The Resolution of the Labor-Scarcity Paradox," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 45(3), pages 513-540, September.
    17. Jose De Gregorio & Holger C. Wolf, 1994. "Terms of Trade, Productivity, and the Real Exchange Rate," Working Papers 94-19, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.
    18. Rudiger Dornbusch, 1985. "Purchasing Power Parity," NBER Working Papers 1591, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. MacDonald, Ronald & Ricci, Luca Antonio, 2007. "Real exchange rates, imperfect substitutability, and imperfect competition," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 639-664, December.
    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. Bodart, Vincent & Carpantier, Jean-François, 2016. "Real exchange rates and skills," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 305-319.
    2. Bordo, Michael D. & Choudhri, Ehsan U. & Fazio, Giorgio & MacDonald, Ronald, 2017. "The real exchange rate in the long run: Balassa-Samuelson effects reconsidered," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 69-92.
    3. Matthias Gubler & Christoph Sax, 2019. "The Balassa-Samuelson effect reversed: new evidence from OECD countries," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Springer;Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, vol. 155(1), pages 1-21, December.

    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. Matthias Gubler & Christoph Sax, 2019. "The Balassa-Samuelson effect reversed: new evidence from OECD countries," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Springer;Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, vol. 155(1), pages 1-21, December.
    2. Martin Berka & Daan Steenkamp, 2018. "Deviations in real exchange rate levels in the OECD countries and their structural determinants," Working Papers 4, New Zealand Centre of Macroeconomics.
    3. Michael Fidora & Claire Giordano & Martin Schmitz, 2021. "Real Exchange Rate Misalignments in the Euro Area," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 32(1), pages 71-107, February.
    4. Bordo, Michael D. & Choudhri, Ehsan U. & Fazio, Giorgio & MacDonald, Ronald, 2017. "The real exchange rate in the long run: Balassa-Samuelson effects reconsidered," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 69-92.
    5. Montecino, Juan Antonio, 2018. "Capital controls and the real exchange rate: Do controls promote disequilibria?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 80-95.
    6. Florian Morvillier, 2020. "Robustness of the Balassa-Samuelson effect: evidence from developing and emerging economies," EconomiX Working Papers 2020-18, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    7. Martin Berka & Michael B. Devereux & Charles Engel, 2018. "Real Exchange Rates and Sectoral Productivity in the Eurozone," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(6), pages 1543-1581, June.
    8. Konrad Adler & Dr. Christian Grisse, 2014. "Real exchange rates and fundamentals: robustness across alternative model specifications," Working Papers 2014-07, Swiss National Bank.
    9. repec:bla:pacecr:v:10:y:2005:i:1:p:29-48 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Christoph Sax & Rolf Weder, 2009. "How to Explain the High Prices in Switzerland?," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 145(IV), pages 463-483, December.
    11. Konrad Adler & Christian Grisse, 2017. "Thousands of BEERs: Take your pick," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(5), pages 1078-1104, November.
    12. Vasily Astrov, 2005. "Sectoral Productivity, Demand, and Terms of Trade: What Drives the Real Appreciation of the East European Currencies?," wiiw Working Papers 34, The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw.
    13. Hoarau, Jean-François, 2009. "L’approche microéconomique du taux de change réel d’équilibre : une revue de la littérature théorique," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 85(4), pages 403-436, décembre.
    14. Andrea Salazar-Díaz & Aarón Levi Garavito-Acosta & Sergio Restrepo Ángel & Leidy Viviana Arcila-Agudelo, 2023. "Real Equilibrium Exchange Rate in Colombia: Thousands of VEC Models Approach," Lecturas de Economía, Universidad de Antioquia, Departamento de Economía, issue 99, pages 33-78, July-Dece.
    15. Hassan, Fadi, 2016. "The price of development: The Penn–Balassa–Samuelson effect revisited," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 291-309.
    16. Clemens Struck & Adnan Velic, 2016. "Relative Prices, Non-Homothetic Preferences, and Product Quality," Trinity Economics Papers tep1516, Trinity College Dublin, Department of Economics.
    17. Bacchetta, Philippe & Chikhani, Pauline, 2020. "On the Weakness of the Swedish Krona," CEPR Discussion Papers 15468, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Marios Zachariadis, 2002. "Productivity and Prices in Europe: Micro-Evidence for the Period 1975 to 1990," Departmental Working Papers 2002-12, Department of Economics, Louisiana State University.
    19. Claire Giordano, 2021. "How frequent a BEER? Assessing the impact of data frequency on real exchange rate misalignment estimation," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 68(3), pages 365-404, July.
    20. Trunin, Pavel (Трунин, Павел) & Bozhechkova, Alexandra (Божечкова, Александра), 2015. "Analysis of Factors Affecting the Dynamics of the Real Ruble Exchange Rate [Анализ Факторов Динамики Реального Валютного Курса Рубля]," Published Papers mak13, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.
    21. Cheung, Yin-Wong & Chinn, Menzie D. & Fujii, Eiji, 2007. "The overvaluation of Renminbi undervaluation," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 762-785, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Real Exchange Rate; Balassa-Samuelson Hypothesis; Skillbiased Technological Change; General Equilibrium;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F16 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade and Labor Market Interactions
    • F31 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Exchange
    • F41 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - Open Economy Macroeconomics
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:bsl:wpaper:2012/08. 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: WWZ (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/wwzbsch.html .

    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.