This paper estimates a structural dynamic equilibrium model of the Brazilian labor market in order to study trade-induced transitional dynamics. The model features a multi-sector economy with ...overlapping generations, heterogeneous workers, endogenous accumulation of sector-specific experience, and costly switching of sectors. The model's estimates yield median costs of mobility ranging from 1.4 to 2.7 times annual average wages, but a high dispersion of these costs across the population. In addition, sector-specific experience is imperfectly transferable across sectors, leading to additional barriers to mobility. Using the estimated model for counterfactual trade liberalization experiments, the main findings are: (1) there is a large labor market response following trade liberalization but the transition may take several years; (2) potential aggregate welfare gains are significantly reduced due to the delayed adjustment; (3) trade-induced welfare effects depend on initial sector of employment and on worker demographics such as age and education. The experiments also highlight the sensitivity of the transitional dynamics with respect to assumptions regarding the mobility of capital.
We study the evolution of trade liberalization's effects on Brazilian local labor markets. Regions facing larger tariff cuts experienced prolonged declines informal sector employment and earnings ...relative to other regions. The impact of tariff changes on regional earnings 20 years after liberalization was three times the effect after 10 years. These increasing effects on regional earnings are inconsistent with conventional spatial equilibrium models, which predict declining effects due to spatial arbitrage. We investigate potential mechanisms, finding empirical support for a mechanism involving imperfect interregional labor mobility and dynamics in labor demand, driven by slow capital adjustment and agglomeration economies. This mechanism gradually amplifies the effects of liberalization, explaining the slow adjustment path of regional earnings and quantitatively accounting for the magnitude of the long-run effects.
Economic Shocks and Crime Dix-Carneiro, Rafael; Soares, Rodrigo R.; Ulyssea, Gabriel
American economic journal. Applied economics,
10/2018, Letnik:
10, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This paper studies the effect of changes in economic conditions on crime. We exploit the 1990s trade liberalization in Brazil as a natural experiment generating exogenous shocks to local economies. ...We document that regions exposed to larger tariff reductions experienced a temporary increase in crime following liberalization. Next, we investigate through what channels the trade-induced economic shocks may have affected crime. We show that the shocks had significant effects on potential determinants of crime, such as labor market conditions, public goods provision, and income inequality. We propose a novel framework exploiting the distinct dynamic responses of these variables to obtain bounds on the effect of labor market conditions on crime. Our results indicate that this channel accounts for 75 to 93 percent of the effect of the trade-induced shocks on crime.
We develop a specific-factors model of regional economies that includes two types of workers, skilled and unskilled. The model delivers a simple equation relating trade-induced local shocks to ...changes in local skill premia. We apply the methodology to Brazil's early 1990s trade liberalization and find statistically significant but modest effects of liberalization on the evolution of the skill premium between 1991 and 2010. The methodology uses widely available household survey data and can easily be applied to other countries and liberalization episodes.
Abstract
We argue that modeling trade imbalances is crucial for understanding transitional dynamics in response to globalization shocks. We build and estimate a general equilibrium, multicountry, ...multisector model of trade with two key ingredients: (i) endogenous trade imbalances arising from households’ consumption and saving decisions; (ii) labor market frictions across and within sectors. We use our model to perform several empirical exercises. We find that the “China shock” accounted for 28% of the decline in U.S. manufacturing between 2000 and 2014—1.65 times the magnitude predicted from a model imposing balanced trade. A concurrent rise in U.S. service employment led to a negligible aggregate unemployment response. We benchmark our model’s predictions for the gains from trade against the popular ACR sufficient-statistics approach. We find that our predictions for the long-run gains from trade and consumption dynamics significantly diverge.
This paper studies the effect of exchange rate shocks on export behavior of multi-product firms. We provide a theoretical framework illustrating how firms adjust their prices, quantities, product ...scope, and sales distribution across products in the event of exchange rate fluctuations. In response to a real exchange rate depreciation, firms increase markups for all products, but markup increases decline with firm-product-specific marginal costs of production. We find robust evidence for our theoretical predictions using Brazilian customs data containing destination-specific and product-specific export sales and quantities. The sample period covers the years 1997-2006, during which Brazil experienced a series of drastic currency fluctuations.
•Labor market consequences of trade deficits are a key concern in policy circles.•We build a model of trade with endogenous imbalances and labor market frictions.•Modeling trade imbalances influences ...the long and short run effects of trade shocks.•Inequality consequences of trade are nuanced and context-specific.
What is the role of trade imbalances for the distributional consequences of globalization? We answer this question through the lens of a quantitative, general equilibrium, multi-country, multi-sector model of trade with four key ingredients: (a) workers with different levels of skills are organized into separate representative households; (b) endogenous trade imbalances arise from households’ consumption and saving decisions; (c) production exhibits capital-skill complementarity; and (d) labor markets feature both sectoral mobility frictions and non-employment. We conduct a series of counterfactual experiments that illustrate the quantitative importance of both trade imbalances and capital-skill complementarity for the dynamics of the skill premium. We show that modeling trade imbalances can lead to stark differences between short- and long-run consequences of globalization shocks for the skill premium.
The returns to schooling and the skill premium are key parameters in various fields and policy debates, including the literatures on globalization and inequality, international migration, and ...technological change. This paper explores the skill premium and its correlation with exports in Latin America, thus linking the skill premium to the emerging literature on the structure of trade and development. Using data on employment and wages for over seven million workers from sixteen Latin American economies, the authors estimate national and industry-specific returns to schooling and skill premiums and study some of their determinants. The evidence suggests that both country and industry characteristics are important in explaining returns to schooling and skill premiums. The analyses also suggest that the incidence of exports within industries, the average income per capita within countries, and the relative abundance of skilled workers are related to the underlying industry and country characteristics that explain these parameters. In particular, sectoral exports are positively correlated with the skill premium at the industry level, a result that supports recent trade models linking exports with wages and the demand for skills.
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