Export Liberalization, Job Creation, and the Skill Premium: Evidence from the US–Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA)

Poverty, labor markets and trade liberalization in Indonesia

“…Following Topalova (2010), several recent studies identify regionally differential effects of trade liberalization by distinguishing between different levels of regional exposure to trade based on the pre-reform labour market structure of the region (Kovak 2013, McCaig 2011, Fukase 2013, Castilho et al 2012. The advantage of this method is that it does not only focus on the manufacturing sector or formal employment but measures the effects of trade liberalization at the household level.…”

Trade Liberalization and Poverty: What Have We Learned in a Decade?

“…Moreover, there is little evidence of labor reallocation from contracting sectors to expanding sectors, the key mechanism within the theorem. Fukase (2013) argues that the Stolper-Samuelson theorem applies in Vietnam, however, and Goldberg & Pavcnik (2007) note that the skill premium may increase if low skill-intensive sectors are the beneficiaries of protection or if the model is modified to include a combination of countries with different degrees of unskilled-labor abundance. In that case, countries opening to trade with more unskilled-labor-abundant countries could experience an increase in the skill premium and in wage inequality (Davis 1996, Davis & Mishra 2007.…”

Does Informal Employment Respond to Growth Opportunities? Trade-Based Evidence from Bangladesh

“…The F-statistics which are above 30 in all cases, suggest a strong first stage. 12 The OLS and IV results are similar in magnitude and, for formal and self-employment, are both significant at the 1 percent level. The coefficients suggest that a 10 percent increase in total export demand would be associated with a 2.5 percent increase in formal employment, and a 3 percent increase in self-employment.…”

“…Armed with the variables we construct above, we estimate the following relationship between direct OECD demand for exports and probability of employment: (12) and between total OECD demand for exports and employment:…”

“…Consequently, we have 185 IO industry-year combinations instead of the full 3 x 65 = 195. 12 As noted above, we take a log transformation of the dependent variable; thus, when employment is zero in a particular employment category for a given year and industry, that observation drops out. Thus, we have slightly different observation counts for each employment category, leading to slightly different first stages.…”