Trade Competition, Technology and Labor Re-allocation

Selva Bahar Baziki, Rita Ginja and Teodora Borota Milicevic

No 2016:1, Working Paper Series, Center for Labor Studies from Uppsala University, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper studies the changes in labor allocation across firms and industries in response to changes in technology (captured by the adoption of information and communication technologies, ICT) and import competition, due to increased exposure to trade competition from China. We use detailed matched worker-firm data from the Swedish manufacturing sector. We provide new evidence on the mobility of heterogeneous workers across firms and document increased assortative matching of workers in ICT intensive industries. However, the sorting patterns are not uniform across industries within this group. The adoption of ICT along with stronger Chinese import competition results in a significant skill upgrade within high-wage firms. Incontrast,intheabsence of strong pressures in importcompetition, sorting occurs at the low end of the worker-firm distribution, i.e. low-skill workers allocate to low-wage firms. Industries with low ICT intensity do not exhibit any of these sorting patterns. We rationalize our empirical findings through a labor market matching model which is able to explain the increased assortative matching in ICT intensive industries through an increase in the relative demand for qualified workers.

Keywords: Wage Inequality; Employment Dynamics; Assortative Matching; Import Competition; Technological Change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 F16 J31 J63 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 83 pages
Date: 2015-12-26
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-ino, nep-int, nep-lab and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Trade Competition, Technology and Labour Reallocation (2016)
Working Paper: Trade Competition, Technology and Labor Re-allocation (2015)
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