Skills, Exports, and the Wages of Seven Million Latin American Workers

Irene Brambilla, Rafael Dix-Carneiro, Daniel Lederman and Guido Porto

No 15996, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The returns to schooling and the skill premium are key parameters in various fields and policy debates, including the literatures on globalization and inequality, international migration, and technological change. This paper explores the skill premium and its correlation with exports in Latin America, thus linking the skill premium to the emerging literature on the structure of trade and development. Using data on employment and wages for over seven million workers from sixteen Latin American economies, the authors estimate national and industry-specific returns to schooling and skill premiums and study some of their determinants. The evidence suggests that both country and industry characteristics are important in explaining returns to schooling and skill premiums. The analyses also suggest that the incidence of exports within industries, the average income per capita within countries, and the relative abundance of skilled workers are related to the underlying industry and country characteristics that explain these parameters. In particular, sectoral exports are positively correlated with the skill premium at the industry level, a result that supports recent trade models linking exports with wages and the demand for skills.

JEL-codes: F13 F14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-05
Note: ITI
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published as Irene Brambilla & Rafael Dix-Carneiro & Daniel Lederman & Guido Porto, 2011. "Skills, Exports, and the Wages of Seven Million Latin American Workers," World Bank Economic Review, Oxford University Press, vol. 26(1), pages 34-60, July.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w15996.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Skills, Exports, and the Wages of Seven Million Latin American Workers (2012)
Working Paper: Skills, Exports, and the Wages of Seven Million Latin American Workers (2011)
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:nbr:nberwo:15996

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w15996

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().