Labour Markets, Education and Duality of Returns

Dawood Mamoon and S. Mansoob Murshed

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to examine the impact of increased trade on wage inequality in developing countries, and whether a higher human capital stock moderates this effect. We look at the skilled-unskilled wage differential. When better educated societies open up their economies, increased trade is likely to induce less inequality on impact because the supply of skills better matches demand. But greater international exposure also brings about technological diffusion, further raising skilled labour demand. This may raise wage inequality, in contrast to the initial egalitarian level effect of human capital. We attempt to measure these two opposing forces. We also employ a broad set of indicators to measure trade liberalization policies as well as general openness, which is an outcome, and not a policy variable. We further examine what type of education most reduces inequality. Our findings suggest that countries with a higher level of initial human capital do well on the inequality front, but human capital which accrues through the trade liberalization channel has inegalitarian effects. Our results also have implications for the speed at which trade policies are liberalized, the implication being that better educated nations should liberalize faster.

Keywords: Integration; Trade Liberalization; Wage Inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 F15 F16 O24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm, nep-int and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/29529/1/MPRA_paper_29529.pdf original version (application/pdf)

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:pra:mprapa:29529

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().