Skill Biased Heterogeneous Firms Trade Liberalization And The Skill Premium Firmes Heterogenes A Differentes Intensite D Habilete Liberalisation Du Commerce Et Prime A L Habilete

Skill biased heterogeneous firms, trade liberalization, and the skill premium

We propose a theory that rising globalization and rising wage inequality are related because trade liberalization raises the demand for highly competitive skill-intensive firms. In our model, only the lowest-cost firms participate in the global economy exactly along the lines of Melitz (2003). In addition to differing in their productivity, firms in our model differ in their skill intensity. We model skill-biased technology as a correlation between skill intensity and technological acumen, and we estimate this correlation to be large using firm-level data from Chile in 1995. A fall in trade costs leads to both greater trade volumes and an increase in the relative demand for skill, as the lowest-cost/most-skilled firms expand to serve the export market while less skill-intensive non-exporters retrench in the face of increased import competition. This mechanism works regardless of factor endowment differences, so we provide an explanation for why globalization and wage inequality move together in both skill-abundant and skill-scarce countries. In our model countries are net exporters of the services of their abundant factor, but there are no Stolper-Samuelson effects because import competition affects all domestic firms equally.

Skill Biased Heterogeneous Firms, Trade Liberalization, and the Skill Premium

The Skill Premium, Technological Change and Appropriability

In the U.S., the skill premium and the non-production/production wage differential increased strongly from the late 1970s onwards. Skill-biased technological change is now generally seen as the dominant explanation, which calls for theories to explain the bias. This paper shows that the increased supply of skill - which is usually seen as countervailing the rise in skill premiums - can actually cause rising skill premiums. The analysis starts from an R&D-driven endogenous growth model. Our key assumption is that skilled labour is employed in non-production activities that both generate and use knowledge inputs. If firms can sufficiently appropriate the intertemporal returns from these activities, skill premiums may rise with the supply of skilled labour. The degree of appropriability is endogenous and rises with the supply of skills. As a result, the skill premium first falls and then increases when skilled labour supply rises. Simultaneously, patents per dollar spent on R&D fall.