Abstract:
The objective of the paper is to answer an often-asked question : if tariff rates are reduced, what will happen to wage inequality ? We consider two types of wage inequality : between occupations (skills premium), and between industries. We use two large data bases of wage inequality that have become recently available and a large dataset of average tariff rates all covering the period between 1980 and 2000. We find that tariff reduction is associated with higher inter-occupational and inter-industry inequality in poorer countries (those below the world median income) and the reverse in richer countries. The results for inter-occupational inequality though must be treated with caution.
Keywords:tariffs; trade; liberalization; wages; inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers) JEL-codes:F1F13D31J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers) New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int Date: 2005-01-27 Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 64