Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Capital Accumulation, Trade Liberalization and Rising Wage Inequality: The Case of Argentina

Contents:

Author Info

  • Leonardo Gasparini

    () (Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales (CEDLAS) FCE - UNLP)

  • Pablo Acosta

    () (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign)

Abstract

Capital accumulation can modify the relative productivity between skilled and unskilled workers, thus leading to changes in the wage structure. In particular, if capital goods are relatively more complementary to skilled workers in the production function (skill-biased technologies), a positive correlation between investment in physical capital and the wage premium would be expected. In this paper we present evidence for this hypothesis by taking advantage of the variability in wage premia and capital investment across industries in the Argentine manufacturing sector. We conclude that the wage premium for workers with complete college education increased more in those industries with higher investment in machinery and equipment. As in Galiani and Sanguinetti (2003, in this journal), the wage premium also grew more in those sectors which faced strong import competition, although this effect is empirically less relevant than the capital accumulation effect.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://cedlas.econo.unlp.edu.ar/archivos_upload/doc_cedlas5.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata in its series CEDLAS, Working Papers with number 0005.

as in new window
Length: 15 pages
Date of creation: Jan 2004
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:dls:wpaper:0005

Contact details of provider:
Postal: Calle 48 No555 - La Plata (1900)
Phone: 21- 1466
Fax: 54-21-25-9536
Web page: http://cedlas.econo.unlp.edu.ar/
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords: wage premium; capital accumulation; technological change; trade liberalization; wage inequality; Argentina.;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Claudia Goldin & Lawrence F. Katz, 1998. "The Origins Of Technology-Skill Complementarity," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 113(3), pages 693-732, August.
  2. Per Krusell & Lee E. Ohanian & Jose-Victor Rios-Rull & Giovanni L. Violante, 1997. "Capital-skill complementarity and inequality: a macroeconomic analysis," Staff Report 239, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
  3. Francesco Caselli, 1999. "Technological Revolutions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(1), pages 78-102, March.
  4. Pabo Sanguinetti & Sebastian Galiani, 2003. "The impact of trade liberalizationon wage inequality:Evidence from Argentina," Department of Economics Working Papers 011, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella.
  5. David Card & John E. DiNardo, 2002. "Skill-Biased Technological Change and Rising Wage Inequality: Some Problems and Puzzles," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 20(4), pages 733-783, October.
  6. Daron Acemoglu, 2000. "Technical Change, Inequality, and the Labor Market," NBER Working Papers 7800, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  7. Peter Gottschalk & Timothy M. Smeeding, 1997. "Cross-National Comparisons of Earnings and Income Inequality," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 35(2), pages 633-687, June.
  8. Edward E. Leamer, 1994. "Trade, Wages and Revolving Door Ideas," NBER Working Papers 4716, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  9. Wood, Adrian, 1995. "North-South Trade, Employment and Inequality: Changing Fortunes in a Skill-Driven World," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198290155, September.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Gasparini, Leonardo & Galiani, Sebastian & Cruces, Guillermo & Acosta, Pablo, 2011. "Educational upgrading and returns to skills in Latin America : evidence from a supply-demand framework, 1990-2010," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5921, The World Bank.
  2. Leonardo Gasparini & Nora Lustig, 2011. "The rise and fall of income inequality in Latin America," Working Papers 213, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
  3. Tebaldi, Edinaldo & Kim, Jongsung, 2008. "Two Tales on the Returns to Education: The Impact of Trade on Wages," MPRA Paper 9698, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  4. Castro, Lucio & Olarreaga, Marcelo & Saslavsky, Daniel, 2007. "The impact of trade with China and India on Argentina's manufacturing employment," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4153, The World Bank.
  5. Lucio Castro & Daniel Saslavsky, 2005. "Trade, Poverty and Employment: The Social Consequences of Integration with China," International Trade 0512017, EconWPA.
  6. Leonardo Gasparini, 2003. "Argentina´s Distributional Failure: The role of Integration and Public Policies," CEDLAS, Working Papers 0001, CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
  7. Lucio Castro, 2005. "Tango with the Dragon: Employment Effects of Trade Integration with China. The Case of Argentina," International Trade 0509004, EconWPA.
  8. Castro, Lucio & Saslavsky, Daniel, 2008. "Trade with China and India and Manufacturing Labour Demand in Argentina," Working Papers UNU-WIDER Research Paper , World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
  9. Ricardo Bebczuk, 2009. "SME Access to Credit in Guatemala and Nicaragua: Challenging Conventional Wisdom with New Evidence," CEDLAS, Working Papers 0080, CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
  10. Leonardo Gasparini, 2003. "Argentina's Distributional Failure: The Role of Integration and Public Policy," IDB Publications 42798, Inter-American Development Bank.
  11. López Bóo, Florencia, 2010. "Returns to Education and Macroeconomic Shocks: Evidence from Argentina," IZA Discussion Papers 4753, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  12. Choi, E. Kwan, 2011. "To integrate with a high- or low-wage country: That is the question," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 792-799, October.
  13. Demombynes, Gabriel & Metzler, Johannes, 2008. "Connecting the unobserved dots : a decomposition analysis of changes in earnings inequality in urban Argentina, 1980-2002," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4624, The World Bank.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:dls:wpaper:0005

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Ana Pacheco).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.