International trade and American wages in general equilibrium, 1967-1995

James Harrigan

No 46, Staff Reports from Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Abstract: In the last quarter century, wage inequality has increased dramatically in the United States. At the same time, the United States has become more integrated into the world economy, relative prices of final goods have changed, the capital stock has more than doubled, and the labor force has become steadily more educated. This paper estimates a flexible, empirical, general equilibrium model of wage determination in an attempt to sort out the connections between these trends. Aggregate data on prices and quantities of imports, outputs, and factor supplies are constructed from disaggregate sources. The econometric analysis concludes that wage inequality has been partly driven by changes in relative factor supplies and relative final goods prices. In contrast, imports have played a negligible direct role.

Keywords: Wages; International trade; Imports; Income distribution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1998
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr46.html (text/html)
https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr46.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Chapter: International Trade and American Wages in General Equilibrium, 1967-1995 (2000)
Working Paper: International Trade and American Wages in General Equilibrium, 1967 - 1995 (1998)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fednsr:46

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Staff Reports from Federal Reserve Bank of New York Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Gabriella Bucciarelli ().