 Trade and unemployment: What do the data say?Gabriel Felbermayr, Julien Prat and Hans-Joerg Schmerer () Munich Reprints in Economics from University of Munich, Department of Economics Abstract: This paper documents a robust empirical regularity: in the long-run, higher trade openness is associated with a lower structural rate of unemployment. We establish this fact using: (i) panel data from 20 OECD countries, (ii) cross-sectional data on a larger set of countries. The time structure of the panel data allows us to control for unobserved heterogeneity, whereas cross-sectional data make it possible to instrument openness by its geographical component. In both setups, we purge the data of business cycle effects, include a host of institutional and geographical variables, and control for within-country trade. Our main finding is robust to various definitions of unemployment rates and openness measures. Our benchmark specification suggests that a 10 percentage point increase in total trade openness reduces aggregate unemployment by about three quarters of one percentage point. Date: 2011 Published in European Economic Review 6 55(2011): pp. 741-758 There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lmu:muenar:20381 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Munich Reprints in Economics from University of Munich, Department of Economics Ludwigstr. 28, 80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC. |
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