Exporting, Wage Profiles, and Human Capital: Evidence from Brazil

Xiao Ma, Marc-Andreas Muendler and Alejandro Nakab

No 34580, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Export activity shapes workers’ experience-wage profiles. Using employer-employee and customs data for Brazilian manufacturing, we document that workers' experience wage profiles are steeper at exporters than at non-exporters and, among exporters, steeper at exporters shipping to high-income destinations. We develop and quantify a model featuring worker-firm wage bargaining, export-market entry by multi-worker firms, and human capital accumulation by workers to interpret the data. Human capital growth can explain one-half of the differences in wage profiles between exporters and non-exporters. We show that increased human capital per worker can account for one-half of the overall gains in real income from trade openness.

JEL-codes: E24 F12 F14 F16 J24 J64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-12
Note: ITI LS
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w34580.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
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:34580

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w34580
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

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 ().