IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/4716.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Trade, Wages and Revolving Door Ideas

Author

Listed:
  • Edward E. Leamer

Abstract

Recent discussions of the effects of globalization and technological change on U.S. wages have suffered from inappropriate or missing references to the basic international trade theorems: The Factor Price Equalization Theorem, the Stolper-Samuelson Theorem and the Samuelson Duality Theorem. Until the theory is better understood, and until the theory and the estimates are sensibly linked, the jury should remain out. This paper gives examples of the misuse of the international micro theory linking technological change and globalization to the internal labor market. This international micro theory serves as a foundation for a reexamination of the NBER Trade and Immigration Data Base that describes output, employment and investment in 450 4-digit SIC U.S. manufacturing sectors beginning in 1970. Estimates of the impact of technological change on income inequality are shown to vary widely depending on the form of the model and the choice of data subsets, but uniformly the estimates suggest that technological change reduced income inequality not increased it. But the data separation of workers into 'production' and 'non-production' workers has little association with skill levels, and these data probably cannot be used to study income inequality.

Suggested Citation

  • Edward E. Leamer, 1994. "Trade, Wages and Revolving Door Ideas," NBER Working Papers 4716, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:4716
    Note: ITI LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w4716.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul Krugman & Robert Lawrence, 1993. "Trade, Jobs, and Wages," NBER Working Papers 4478, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    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. Campbell, Douglas L. & Lusher, Lester, 2019. "The impact of real exchange rate shocks on manufacturing workers: An autopsy from the MORG," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 12-28.
    2. Rey, Sergio, 2015. "Bells in Space: The Spatial Dynamics of US Interpersonal and Interregional Income Inequality," MPRA Paper 69482, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Tiago Pereira, 2016. "The effect of developing countries' competition on regional labour markets in Portugal," GEE Papers 0058, Gabinete de Estratégia e Estudos, Ministério da Economia, revised Mar 2016.
    4. Nathalie Chusseau & Joël Hellier, 2012. "Globalisation and Inequality: Where do we stand?," Journal of Income Distribution, Ad libros publications inc., vol. 21(3-4), pages 7-34, November.
    5. Meschi, Elena & Taymaz, Erol & Vivarelli, Marco, 2011. "Trade, technology and skills: Evidence from Turkish microdata," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(S1), pages 60-70.
    6. Reza Oladi & John Gilbert & Hamid Beladi, 2011. "Foreign Direct Investment, Non‐Traded Goods And Real Wages," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(1), pages 36-41, February.
    7. Ann Harrison & John McLaren & Margaret S. McMillan, 2010. "Recent Findings on Trade and Inequality," NBER Working Papers 16425, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Nathalie Chusseau & Michel Dumont, 2012. "Growing Income Inequalities in Advanced," Working Papers hal-00993359, HAL.
    9. Maskus, Keith E., 1997. "Should core labor standards be imposed through international trade policy?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1817, The World Bank.
    10. Dube Arindrajit & Reddy Sanjay G., 2014. "Threat Effects and Trade: Wage Discipline through Product Market Competition," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 4(2), pages 213-252, March.
    11. Farrokh Nourzad, 2005. "Macroeconomic and Sectoral Effects of International Trade: A Vector Error-Correction Study," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 33(1), pages 43-54, March.
    12. Kevin Sylwester, 2003. "Changes in income inequality and the black market premium," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(4), pages 403-413.
    13. Carsten Ochsen, 2006. "Zukunft der Arbeit und Arbeit der Zukunft in Deutschland," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 7(2), pages 173-193, May.
    14. Robert L. Hetzel, 1994. "The free trade debate: the illusion of security versus growth," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, issue Spr, pages 39-58.
    15. Duncan Maclennan & Gwilym Pryce, 1996. "Global Economic Change, Labour Market Adjustment and the Challenges for European Housing Policies," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 33(10), pages 1849-1865, December.
    16. Gustavo Gonzaga & Beatriz Muriel & Cristina Terra, 2005. "Abertura Comercial, Desigualdade Salarial E Sindicalização," Anais do XXXIII Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 33rd Brazilian Economics Meeting] 073, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    17. Zeng, Dao-Zhi & Zhao, Laixun, 2010. "Globalization, interregional and international inequalities," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(3), pages 352-361, May.
    18. Joël Hellier, 2013. "The North-South HOS Model, Inequality and Globalization," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Joël Hellier & Nathalie Chusseau (ed.), Growing Income Inequalities, chapter 4, pages 107-146, Palgrave Macmillan.
    19. José Palma, 2015. "Globalizing Inequality: ‘Centrifugal’ and ‘Centripetal’ Forces at Work," Working Papers id:7199, eSocialSciences.
    20. Timothy F. Bresnahan & Erik Brynjolfsson & Lorin M. Hitt, 2002. "Information Technology, Workplace Organization, and the Demand for Skilled Labor: Firm-Level Evidence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(1), pages 339-376.

    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:nbr:nberwo:4716. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.