 Skill-biased imports, skill acquisition, and migrationJingting Fan and Lei Li Journal of International Economics, 2025, vol. 157, issue C Abstract: Imported capital goods, which embody skill-complementary technologies, can increase the supply of skills in developing countries. Focusing on China and using a shift-share design, we show that city-level capital goods import growth increases the local skill share and that both skill acquisition and migration play a role. We develop and quantify a spatial equilibrium model with these two mechanisms to examine the aggregate effects of capital goods imports, accounting for trade and migration linkages between cities. Counterfactual experiments suggest that the growth in capital goods imports in China between 2000 and 2010 led to a 3.1–7.3 million increase in the stock of college graduates, representing 4.4–10.4% of the total increase over this period, with the increase disproportionately occurring in coastal regions. These endogenous skill supply responses reduce by half the increase in the aggregate skill premium due to capital goods imports. Keywords: Imported capital goods; Capital-skill complementarity; Skill acquisition; Migration (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:inecon:v:157:y:2025:i:c:s0022199625000844 DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2025.104128 Access Statistics for this article Journal of International Economics is currently edited by Gourinchas, Pierre-Olivier and RodrÃguez-Clare, Andrés More articles in Journal of International Economics from Elsevier |
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