IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tin/wpaper/20040021.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Globalization, Roundaboutness, and Relative Wages

Author

Listed:
  • Joseph Francois

    (Faculty of Economics, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, and CEPR)

  • Kevin Grier

    (University of Oklahoma)

  • Douglas Nelson

    (Tulane University & Leverhulme Centre (Nottingham))

Abstract

We depart from the trade and wages literature and its emphasis on North-South trade, examining North-North by developing the basic linkages between trade-based integration and relative wages in an Ethier-type division of labor model. Using this model we identify a formal relationship between international trade, productivity, and wages. We then examine the trivariate relationship between trade, growth in total factor productivity (TFP), and the skill premium in a vector autoregression framework. We find evidence of a long-run relationship between growth in intermediate goods and changes in TFP. Controlling for this relationship we also find a positive relationship between trade and the skill-premium.

Suggested Citation

  • Joseph Francois & Kevin Grier & Douglas Nelson, 2004. "Globalization, Roundaboutness, and Relative Wages," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 04-021/2, Tinbergen Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:tin:wpaper:20040021
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://papers.tinbergen.nl/04021.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael Spence, 1976. "Product Selection, Fixed Costs, and Monopolistic Competition," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 43(2), pages 217-235.
    2. James R. Markusen, 1990. "Micro-foundations of External Economies," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 23(3), pages 495-508, August.
    3. Werner Antweiler & Daniel Trefler, 2002. "Increasing Returns and All That: A View from Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(1), pages 93-119, March.
    4. Robert C. Feenstra & Gene M. Grossman & Douglas A. Irwin (ed.), 1996. "The Political Economy of Trade Policy: Papers in Honor of Jagdish Bhagwati," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262061864, April.
    5. Feenstra, Robert C. & Hanson, Gordon H., 1997. "Foreign direct investment and relative wages: Evidence from Mexico's maquiladoras," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(3-4), pages 371-393, May.
    6. Kunst, Robert M & Marin, Dalia, 1989. "On Exports and Productivity: A Causal Analysis," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 71(4), pages 699-703, November.
    7. Marin, Dalia, 1992. "Is the Export-Led.Growth Hypothesis Valid for Industrialized Countries?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 74(4), pages 678-688, November.
    8. Mezzetti, Claudio & Dinopoulos, Elias, 1991. "Domestic unionization and import competition," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-2), pages 79-100, August.
    9. Gene M. Grossman, 1984. "International Competition and the Unionized Sector," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 17(3), pages 541-556, August.
    10. Robert E. Baldwin & Glen G. Cain, 2000. "Shifts In Relative U.S. Wages: The Role Of Trade, Technology, And Factor Endowments," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 82(4), pages 580-595, November.
    11. Brander, James A. & Spencer, Barbara J., 1988. "Unionized oligopoly and international trade policy," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(3-4), pages 217-234, May.
    12. Atesoglu, H Sonmez & Vilasuso, Jon, 1999. "A Band Spectral Analysis of Exports and Economic Growth in the United States," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(1), pages 140-152, February.
    13. Colin Lawrence & Robert Z. Lawrence, 1985. "Manufacturing Wage Dispersion: An End Game Interpretation," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 16(1), pages 47-116.
    14. Francois, Joseph F, 1994. "Global Production and Trade: Factor Migration and Commercial Policy with International Scale Economies," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 35(3), pages 565-581, August.
    15. Trefler, Daniel, 1995. "The Case of the Missing Trade and Other Mysteries," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1029-1046, December.
    16. David Greenaway & Richard Upward & Katharine Wakelin (ed.), 2002. "Trade, Investment, Migration and Labour Market Adjustment," International Economic Association Series, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-1-4039-2018-8.
    17. Choi, E. Kwan & Harrigan, James, 2003. "Handbook of International Trade," Staff General Research Papers Archive 11375, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    18. Yamada, Hiroshi, 1998. "A note on the causality between export and productivity:: an empirical re-examination," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 111-114, October.
    19. Barbara Dluhosch, 2000. "Industrial Location and Economic Integration," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 1902.
    20. Baldwin,Richard E. & Francois,Joseph F. (ed.), 1999. "Dynamic Issues in Commercial Policy Analysis," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521641715, October.
    21. Gaston, Noel & Trefler, Daniel, 1995. "Union wage sensitivity to trade and protection: Theory and evidence," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(1-2), pages 1-25, August.
    22. Ethier, Wilfred J, 1982. "National and International Returns to Scale in the Modern Theory of International Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(3), pages 389-405, June.
    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. Joseph Francois & Julia Woerz, 2008. "Producer Services, Manufacturing Linkages, and Trade," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 8(3), pages 199-229, 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. Dumont, Michel, 2004. "The Impact of International Trade with Newly Industrialised Countries on the Wages and Employment of Low-Skilled and High-Skilled Workers in the European Union," Thesis Commons bmxag, Center for Open Science.
    2. Joseph Francois & Douglas R. Nelson, 2000. "Victims of Progress: Economic Integration, Specialization, and Wages for Unskilled Labor," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 00-065/2, Tinbergen Institute.
    3. Robert Feenstra & Gordon Hanson, 2001. "Global Production Sharing and Rising Inequality: A Survey of Trade and Wages," NBER Working Papers 8372, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Paolo Epifani & Gino Gancia, 2008. "The Skill Bias of World Trade," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(530), pages 927-960, July.
    5. Atolia, Manoj & Kurokawa, Yoshinori, 2016. "The impact of trade margins on the skill premium: Evidence from Mexico," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 38(5), pages 895-915.
    6. Joseph F. Francois & Douglas Nelson, 2002. "A Geometry Of Specialisation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(481), pages 649-678, July.
    7. Gaston, Noel & Trefler, Daniel, 1995. "Union wage sensitivity to trade and protection: Theory and evidence," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(1-2), pages 1-25, August.
    8. Salman Haider & Aadil Ahmad Ganaie & Bandi Kamaiah, 2019. "Total Factor Productivity and Openness in Indian Economy: 1970–2011," Foreign Trade Review, , vol. 54(1), pages 46-57, February.
    9. Robert C. Feenstra, 1998. "Integration of Trade and Disintegration of Production in the Global Economy," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(4), pages 31-50, Fall.
    10. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:6:y:2007:i:7:p:1-10 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Henry Overman & Stephen Redding & Anthony J. Venables, 2001. "The Economic Geography of Trade, Production, and Income: A Survey of Empirics," CEP Discussion Papers dp0508, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    12. Jorge Saba Arbache, 2001. "Trade Liberalisation and Labor Markets in Developing Countries: Theory and Evidence," Studies in Economics 0112, School of Economics, University of Kent.
    13. Harrison, Ann & Rodríguez-Clare, Andrés, 2010. "Trade, Foreign Investment, and Industrial Policy for Developing Countries," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Dani Rodrik & Mark Rosenzweig (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 4039-4214, Elsevier.
    14. Trefler, Daniel & Zhu, Susan Chun, 2010. "The structure of factor content predictions," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(2), pages 195-207, November.
    15. Susan Chun Zhu & Daniel Trefler, 2001. "Ginis in General Equilibrium: Trade, Technology and Southern Inequality," NBER Working Papers 8446, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Yoshinori Kurokawa, 2011. "Variety-skill complementarity: a simple resolution of the trade-wage inequality anomaly," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 46(2), pages 297-325, February.
    17. F. Abraham & E. Brock, 2002. "Sectoral Employment Efkcts of Trade and ProductiviQ in a Small Open Economy," Review of Business and Economic Literature, KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Review of Business and Economic Literature, vol. 0(2), pages 167-204.
    18. Harald Fadinger & Pablo Fleiss, 2011. "Trade and Sectoral Productivity," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 121(555), pages 958-989, September.
    19. Michael C. Burda & Barbara Dluhosch, 2002. "Fragmentation, Globalisation and Labour Markets," International Economic Association Series, in: David Greenaway & Richard Upward & Katharine Wakelin (ed.), Trade, Investment, Migration and Labour Market Adjustment, chapter 4, pages 47-65, Palgrave Macmillan.
    20. Ana Mauleon & Huasheng Song & Vincent Vannetelbosch, 2010. "Networks of Free Trade Agreements among Heterogeneous Countries," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 12(3), pages 471-500, June.
    21. Robert C. Feenstra, 1998. "Integration of Trade and Disintegration of Production in the Global Economy," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(4), pages 31-50, Fall.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    trade and wages; globalization; division of labor; monopolistic competition; intra-industry trade;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

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

    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:tin:wpaper:20040021. 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: Tinbergen Office +31 (0)10-4088900 (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/tinbenl.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.