Search

We conduct an input–output analysis of China’s employment changes due to changes in trade structure on a sectoral level. We find that between 2002 and 2007 China generated about 71 million jobs due to trade expansion. We also estimate the additional amount of trade that would be needed if China were using its trade surplus as the main tool to absorb its excess labour. Given the magnitude of this estimated amount, we conclude that this ‘mercantilist’ approach to excess labour absorption is not feasible. Finally, using Spearman rank correlation analysis, we find that the ranking of China’s sectors’ employment generation capacities is inversely related to the ranking of these sectors’ trade performances. This suggests that the ‘mercantilist’ approach to excess labour absorption is not only infeasible but also inefficient. We end the paper by suggesting a more balanced growth path for China.

This paper estimates the effects of outward Foreign Direct Investment (employment in affiliates abroad) on employment, wages and the wage share in Austria using panel data for the period 1996–2005. There is evidence of significant negative effects of FDI on both employment and wages, and consequently on the wage share. The results are not limited to workers in low-skilled sectors. The negative employment effect is mainly due to the rise in employment in the foreign affiliates in Eastern Europe. The negative wage effects originate from affiliate employment in both Eastern Europe and the developed countries in the industrial sector, but FDI in Eastern Europe has positive wage effects in the services sector due to possible scope effects.

This article presents an economic geography model with two differentiated sectors that exhibit weaker inter and stronger intra-industry input-output linkages. Labour is also differentiated according to skills in a hierarchy of tasks they can perform. Globalisation occurs in two distinct phases, leading to the agglomeration of an industry (manufacturing) in the first wave, which is subsequently displaced by the other industry (services) when the second wave of globalisation takes place. Because of agglomeration effects, the increase in relative endowment of a factor may increase its relative wages, leading to more inequality. Within and between nations inequality can result.

This paper studies the impact of migration policy liberalisation on international labour migration in the enlarged European Union (EU) in a structural economic geography approach. The liberalisation of migration policy would induce an additional 1.80–2.98% of the total EU workforce to change their country of location, with most of migrant workers relocating from the East to the West. The average net migration rate is decreasing in the level of integration, suggesting that from an economic point of view no regulatory policy responses are necessary to labour migration in the enlarged EU.

In this paper we study the employment effects of changes in the levels and patterns of trade integration and outsourcing in the Austrian economy over the periods 1995-2000 and 2000-2005. Based on an input-output framework, we apply a hierarchical decomposition analysis to disentangle the employment effects of changes in labour productivity, technical input coefficients and final demand components. Outsourcing is modelled as changes in the shares of domestically produced intermediates. For this some further details can be derived by distinguishing between intermediate imports according to educational intensities of the imported intermediate products. A similar decomposition of the final demand vector allows then to draw conclusions on the employment effects of overall trade integration over this period. We further calculate the employment effects, distinguishing three employment groups by educational attainment levels. The results suggest that the overall employment effect of trade integration has been positive in general. On top of that we do not find that the unskilled workers are hurt more than the other two skill groups. Further we find a distinct pattern of employment effects in the two periods considered In the period 1995-2000 we observe relatively strong positive employment effects in the production of high skill intensive products and negligible effects in the production of low skill intensive products. However, this pattern changed in the period 2000-2005 where strong positive employment effects are found in the latter but even negative employment effects in the production of high skill intensive commodities.

A new gender wage gap decomposition methodology is introduced, which does not suffer from identification problems caused by unobserved nondiscriminatory wage structure. The methodology is used to measure the relative size of Korean gender wage gaps, from 1994 to 2000 across industries, differentiated by industrial knowledge intensity, where knowledge intensity is the extent to which industries produce or employ high-technology products. Korea represents an important case study, since it possesses one of the fastest growing knowledge-intensive economies among industrialized countries. Empirical results indicate that over this period, discrimination (the unexplained portion of the gender wage gaps) in Korea was statistically smaller in knowledge-intensive industries than in industries with low knowledge intensity. Also, discrimination was declining on average over the period. This suggests that continued growth in knowledge-intensive industries in Korea may lead to further declines in the overall gender gap.

This paper examines the determinants of functional income distribution in West Germany. The approach is to estimate a complete system of factor share equations for low-skilled labor, high-skilled labor, capital, energy, and materials, taking account of biased technological progress and increasing trade-orientation. Technological progress is found to reduce the share of low-skilled labor and to raise the share of high-skilled labor. The effect of technology bias on the two labor shares is enhanced by substitution of intermediate inputs for lowskilled labor, which is almost absent in the case of high-skilled labor. Trade-induced changes in the composition of aggregate output tend to mitigate these effects, due to the relatively favorable export performance of low-skill intensive industries. The year-to-year variation in the low-skilled share can be attributed to input prices, biased technological progress, and trade-induced structural change in the proportion 19:77:4. For high-skilled labor and capital, the output composition effect of trade contributes about one percent. The results are robust across several specifications examined.