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Do Low-Income Countries Have a High-Wage Option?

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  • Rodrik, Dani

Abstract

Poor countries must specialize in standardized, labour-intensive commodities. Middle-income countries may have a richer menu of options available to them if their labour force is reasonably well-educated and skilled. This paper is motivated by the possibility that there may exist multiple specialization patterns for countries of the second type. What creates the multiplicity of equilibria is a coordination problem inherent in high-tech activities. It is assumed that high-tech production requires a range of differentiated intermediate inputs that are non-tradable. For the high-tech sector to become viable, a sufficiently large number of intermediates has to be produced domestically. But if none is currently being produced, there is little incentive for any single firm to do so on its own. The economy may get stuck in a low-wage, low-tech equilibrium -- even though the high-tech sector is viable. As long as the high-tech sector is more capital-intensive than the low-tech sector, a high-wage policy would stimulate the high-tech sector and be welfare-enhancing.

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Paper provided by C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number 862.

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Date of creation: Jan 1994
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Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:862

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Keywords: Technology; Trade Strategy; Wage Policy;

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  1. Antonio Ciccone & Kiminori Matsuyama, 1992. "Start-up Costs and Pecuniary Externalities as Barriers to Economic Development," Discussion Papers 1031, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
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  4. Murphy, Kevin M. & Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W., 1989. "Industrialization and the Big Push," Scholarly Articles 3606235, Harvard University Department of Economics.
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Cited by:
  1. Kimakova, Alena & Rajabiun, Reza, 1999. "An Applied General Equilibrium Analysis of EU Integration for Hungary and Slovakia," Transition Economics Series 9, Institute for Advanced Studies.

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