Trade, Technology and Human Capital: Stylised Facts and Quantitative Evidence

Abstract

Stylised evidence on trade, total factor productivity (TFP) and skill intensity of the labour force is presented. Features emerging as salient are: growing trade in technology-intensive products from the industrialised nations to the relatively laggard nations leads to embodied technology diffusion; the technology-intensive sectors have larger shares of skilled workers; countries experiencing TFP growth usually have higher levels of educational attainment; also, the skilled labour payment share for a sector is positively associated with that sector's regional trade share. These facts together help explain why endowment of more skilled labour facilitates absorption of technology ferried via trade. Copyright Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002.

A hybrid production structure in trade: theory and implications

“…We showed that the impact on wages depends on factor 7 See Feenstra and Hanson (2003) for eloquent narratives of such kind of production activities in the context of the US. 8 Foreign capital induced technology transfer is not modeled here for keeping the model tractable; however, it could be investigated in future research-see Das (2002). Under global integration and potential technology transfer, it is pertinent to note that global production sharing is beneficial as it might lead to increase in income under some less stringent condition.…”

“…Despite the opposition against free trade, the enormous benefits under global integration, for example, in developing Asian and Latin American nations, calls for renewed attention towards trade and its impacts. The issues of skillunskilled wage gap, relative price differences and offshore outsourcing are discussed at length in the current research (Nahuis 2004;Jones 2000;Das 2002Das , 2005. Since technical progress and trade are intertwined, the aspect of skill-biased technical change in inducing wage inequality has also been discussed in the literature (Weiss 2008;Stichinava 2007).…”

Hub-and-Spokes Free Trade Agreements in the Presence of Technology Spillovers: An Application to the Western Hemisphere

“…7 Different factors affect the capacity of a given economy to capture the benefits of technological innovation. Investment in human capital or skill acquisition, for instance, can help the development of technological or social capability to absorb innovation (Nelson 1990;Levinthal 1989, 1990;Das 2000Das , 2002. The effective assimilation depends, inter alia, on the skill intensity of the labor force which helps unlocking the potential of technology to induce productivity growth.…”

“…We assume that the share of skilled labor in total labor payment for a region and/or sector is an index of absorption capacity. In fact, formal education-related human capital stock (proxied by mean years of total education per working-age person) is highly correlated with skilled-labor payment shares in GTAP (Das 2002). Thus, investment in skills through formal education leads to increased AC and increased realization of potential TFP improvement.…”

Food–feed–biofuel trilemma: Biotechnological innovation policy for sustainable development

“…See, for example,Cohen and Levinthal (1990),Das (2002Das ( , 2007,Fontes (2001). 12 50% threshold values are considered for effective technology penetration beyond certain level(World Bank, p.88, 2008b).…”