Two Tales on the Returns to Education: The Impact of Trade on Wages

Edinaldo Tebaldi and Jongsung Kim

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper uses microdata from the Current Population Survey combined with data from the U.S. International Trade Commission and Bureau of Economic Analysis to evaluate the impacts of international trade (imports penetration and exports intensiveness) on wages with a special focus on the returns to education. Consistent with the literature, our empirical analysis provides evidence that the wage rates of similarly skilled workers differ across net-exporting, net-importing and nontradable industries. Our results add to the literature by showing that the wage gap usually found across importing and exporting industries vanishes for highly-skilled workers (workers with college degree and beyond) when we control for the cross-effect between international trade and education, but the wage gap due to international trade still persists for low-skilled workers. This finding supports the view that education serves as an equalizer and counterbalances the adverse impact from imports-penetration on wages of highly-skilled workers

Keywords: Trade; Returns to Education; Wage Differential (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F16 J3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-07-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-hrm and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Two Tales on the Returns to Education: The Impact of Trade on Wages (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:9698

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