The 1990s trade and wages debate in retrospect

Adrian Wood

The World Economy, 2018, vol. 41, issue 4, 975-999

Abstract: This paper revisits the trade and wages debate of the 1990s in the light of widespread concern that, contrary to the consensus from that debate, the costs of globalisation to less†skilled workers in developed countries have been an important cause of the recent rise of populism. The 1990s debate stimulated a new and now large field of economic research, but in hindsight it suffered from errors of omission on both sides, and from an academic perspective it ended prematurely. Even now, the available evidence does not permit any firm conclusion about the contribution of globalisation to the rise in inequality in developed countries over the past few decades. The economic consensus at the end of the debate also fostered unwarranted political complacency about the social costs of globalisation.

Date: 2018
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