IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/urb/wpaper/07_13.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Exporters, Importers and Two-way Traders: the Links between Internationalization, Skills and Wages

Author

Listed:
  • Francesco Serti

    (Scuola Superiore S. Anna, Pisa)

  • Chiara Tomasi

    (Scuola Superiore S. Anna, Pisa & Università di Urbino)

  • Antonello Zanfei

    (Istituto di Scienze Economiche, Università degli Studi di Urbino "Carlo Bo")

Abstract

How do trade activities affect firms' employment and wages structures? Using firm level data on Italian manufacturing firms, this paper adds to the existing literature, by assessing how the degree of involvement in international trade impacts on workforce composition, earning levels and wage inequality. We differentiate firms involved in both trading activities - namely two-way traders - from firms that only export, and from those that only import. We show that two-way traders have a higher propensity to employ non-production workers, exhibit significant wage gaps, but also pay higher wages for both production and non production workers, relative to non internationalized firms and to firms which are involved only in either export or import. The paper also looks at how the wages and the skill structure of the trading firms change with the country of destination and origin and with the firms? sectoral and geographical diversification.

Suggested Citation

  • Francesco Serti & Chiara Tomasi & Antonello Zanfei, 2007. "Exporters, Importers and Two-way Traders: the Links between Internationalization, Skills and Wages," Working Papers 0713, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Department of Economics, Society & Politics - Scientific Committee - L. Stefanini & G. Travaglini, revised 2007.
    • Handle: RePEc:urb:wpaper:07_13
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.econ.uniurb.it/RePEc/urb/wpaper/WP_07_13.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2007
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lawrence F. Katz & Kevin M. Murphy, 1992. "Changes in Relative Wages, 1963–1987: Supply and Demand Factors," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(1), pages 35-78.
    2. John Van Reenen & Rupert Harrison & Rachel Griffith, 2006. "How Special Is the Special Relationship? Using the Impact of U.S. R&D Spillovers on U.K. Firms as a Test of Technology Sourcing," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1859-1875, December.
    3. Bernard, Andrew B. & Jensen, J. Bradford, 1997. "Exporters, skill upgrading, and the wage gap," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1-2), pages 3-31, February.
    4. Maurin, Eric & Thesmar, David, 2002. "Globalization and the demand for skill: An Export Based Channel," CEPR Discussion Papers 3406, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Elhanan Helpman & Marc J. Melitz & Stephen R. Yeaple, 2004. "Export Versus FDI with Heterogeneous Firms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(1), pages 300-316, March.
    6. Biscourp, Pierre & Kramarz, Francis, 2007. "Employment, skill structure and international trade: Firm-level evidence for France," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 22-51, May.
    7. Mirabelle Muûls & Mauro Pisu, 2009. "Imports and Exports at the Level of the Firm: Evidence from Belgium," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(5), pages 692-734, May.
    8. Bernhard Heitger & Jürgen Stehn, 2003. "Trade, Technical Change, and Labour Market Adjustment," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(10), pages 1481-1502, November.
    9. Thorsten Schank & Claus Schnabel & Joachim Wagner, 2016. "Do Exporters Really Pay Higher Wages? First Evidence from German Linked Employer–Employee Data," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Microeconometrics of International Trade, chapter 5, pages 177-213, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    10. Rajneesh Narula & Antonello Zanfei, 2003. "Globalisation of Innovation The Role of Multinational Enterprises," DRUID Working Papers 03-15, DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies.
    11. Laszlo Halpern & Miklos Koren & Adam Szeidl, 2005. "Import and Productivity," CERS-IE WORKING PAPERS 0509, Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies.
    12. Paolo Manasse & Luca Stanca, 2003. "Working on the Train? The Role of Technical Progress and Trade in Explaining Wage Differentials in Italian Firms," Development Working Papers 177, Centro Studi Luca d'Agliano, University of Milano.
    13. Marc J. Melitz, 2003. "The Impact of Trade on Intra-Industry Reallocations and Aggregate Industry Productivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(6), pages 1695-1725, November.
    14. repec:rus:hseeco:122439 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. John Bound & George E. Johnson, 1989. "Changes in the Structure of Wages During the 1980's: An Evaluation of Alternative Explanations," NBER Working Papers 2983, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Alessandra Tucci, 2005. "Trade, Foreign Networks and Performance: a Firm-Level Analysis for India," Development Working Papers 199, Centro Studi Luca d'Agliano, University of Milano.
    17. Robert Feenstra & Gordon Hanson, 2001. "Global Production Sharing and Rising Inequality: A Survey of Trade and Wages," NBER Working Papers 8372, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Bound, John & Johnson, George, 1992. "Changes in the Structure of Wages in the 1980's: An Evaluation of Alternative Explanations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(3), pages 371-392, June.
    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


    Cited by:

    1. Stefano Costa & Carmine Pappalardo & Claudio Vicarelli, 2017. "Internationalization choices and Italian firm performance during the crisis," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 48(3), pages 753-769, March.
    2. Lejour, Arjan & Rojas Romasgosa, Hugo & Rodriguez, Victor & Montalvo, Carvos & Van der Zee, Frans, 2009. "Trade costs, Openness and Productivity: Market Access at Home and Abroad," MPRA Paper 21214, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Monte, Ferdinando, 2011. "Skill bias, trade, and wage dispersion," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(2), pages 202-218, March.
    2. Francisco Alcalá & Pedro Hernández, 2010. "Firms’ main market, human capital, and wages," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 1(4), pages 433-458, September.
    3. Joachim Wagner, 2016. "International Trade and Firm Performance: A Survey of Empirical Studies since 2006," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Microeconometrics of International Trade, chapter 2, pages 43-87, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    4. Irene Iodice & Chiara Tomasi, 2015. "Skill upgrading, wage gap and international trade: firm-level evidence for Italian manufacturing firms," LEM Papers Series 2015/06, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    5. Francesco Serti & Chiara Tomasi & Antonello Zanfei, 2009. "The links between internationalization, skills and wages. The role of differences across firms and across partner countries," LEM Papers Series 2009/19, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    6. Paolo Epifani & Gino Gancia, 2008. "The Skill Bias of World Trade," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(530), pages 927-960, July.
    7. Boddin, Dominik & Henze, Philipp, 2015. "International trade and the occupational mix in manufacturing: Evidence from german micro data," Economics Working Papers 2015-05, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Department of Economics.
    8. Nathalie Chusseau & Joël Hellier, 2012. "Globalisation and Inequality: Where do we stand?," Journal of Income Distribution, Ad libros publications inc., vol. 21(3-4), pages 7-34, November.
    9. Carl Davidson & Fredrik Heyman & Steven Matusz & Fredrik Sjöholm & Susan Chun Zhu, 2016. "Global Engagement, Complex Tasks and the Distribution of Occupational Employment," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(4), pages 717-736, September.
    10. Ying Ge & Tony Fang & Yeheng Jiang, 2019. "Access to imported intermediates and intra‐firm wage inequality," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(8), pages 2364-2384, August.
    11. Hoekman & Bernard & Winters, L. Alan, 2005. "Trade and employment : stylized facts and research findings," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3676, The World Bank.
    12. Hartmut Egger & Udo Kreickemeier, 2017. "Fairness, Trade, and Inequality," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: International Trade and Labor Markets Welfare, Inequality and Unemployment, chapter 12, pages 339-380, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    13. Elhanan Helpman & Oleg Itskhoki & Stephen Redding, 2010. "Inequality and Unemployment in a Global Economy," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 78(4), pages 1239-1283, July.
    14. Andrew B. Bernard & J. Bradford Jensen & Stephen J. Redding & Peter K. Schott, 2012. "The Empirics of Firm Heterogeneity and International Trade," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 4(1), pages 283-313, July.
    15. Egger, Hartmut & Etzel, Daniel, 2012. "The impact of trade on employment, welfare, and income distribution in unionized general oligopolistic equilibrium," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(6), pages 1119-1135.
    16. Joachim Wagner, 2016. "A survey of empirical studies using transaction level data on exports and imports," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 152(1), pages 215-225, February.
    17. James Harrigan & Ariell Reshef & Farid Toubal, 2016. "The March of the Techies: Technology, Trade, and Job Polarization in France, 1994-2007," Working Papers 2016-15, CEPII research center.
    18. Unel, Bulent, 2010. "Firm heterogeneity, trade, and wage inequality," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(8), pages 1369-1379, August.
    19. Liang Zhang & Bin Qiu & Xiaocong Xu & Shaoqin Sun, 2021. "Offshoring, Wages, and Skill Premiums: Firm‐level Evidence from China," China & World Economy, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, vol. 29(5), pages 1-27, September.
    20. Marianne Matthee & Neil Rankin & Carli Bezuidenhout, 2017. "Labour demand and the distribution of wages in South African manufacturing exporters," WIDER Working Paper Series 011, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    heterogeneous firms; exports; imports; wage inequality; skills.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F10 - International Economics - - Trade - - - General
    • F16 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade and Labor Market Interactions
    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:urb:wpaper:07_13. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Carmela Nicoletti (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/feurbit.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.