Multinational corporations and labour market competition in host countries: Evidence from South Africa

Talent Nesongano

No wp-2026-33, WIDER Working Paper Series from World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER)

Abstract: This paper investigates how competition for skilled labour from foreign multinational corporations (MNCs) affects the alignment of wages and labour productivity in domestic firms. Using linked employer-employee records, worker data, and firm-level customs declarations from South Africa, combined with the World Bank's harmonized bilateral sectoral FDI data, I construct a measure of regional exposure to competition for skilled labour from MNCs. The measure exploits global sectoral FDI shocks interacted with predetermined skilled-employment shares of MNCs.

Keywords: Multinational firms; Wages; Productivity; Skilled workers; Automation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/Publ ... n-host-countries.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

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:unu:wpaper:wp-2026-33

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in WIDER Working Paper Series from World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Siméon Rapin ().