IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_12350.html

Exporting, Wage Profiles, and Human Capital: Evidence from Brazil

Author

Listed:
  • Xiao Ma
  • Marc-Andreas Muendler
  • Alejandro Nakab

Abstract

Export activity shapes workers’ experience-wage profiles. Using employer-employee and customs data for Brazilian manufacturing, we document that workers’ experience-wage profiles are steeper at exporters than at non-exporters and, among exporters, steeper at exporters shipping to high-income destinations. We develop and quantify a model featuring worker-firm wage bargaining, export-market entry by multi-worker firms, and human capital accumulation by workers to interpret the data. Human capital growth can explain one-half of the differences in wage profiles between exporters and non-exporters. We show that increased human capital per worker can account for one-half of the overall gains in real income from trade openness.

Suggested Citation

  • Xiao Ma & Marc-Andreas Muendler & Alejandro Nakab, 2025. "Exporting, Wage Profiles, and Human Capital: Evidence from Brazil," CESifo Working Paper Series 12350, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12350
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp12350.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Victoria Gregory, 2020. "Firms as Learning Environments: Implications for Earnings Dynamics and Job Search," Working Papers 2020-036, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, revised Sep 2023.
    2. James Heckman & Lance Lochner & Christopher Taber, 1998. "Explaining Rising Wage Inequality: Explanations With A Dynamic General Equilibrium Model of Labor Earnings With Heterogeneous Agents," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 1(1), pages 1-58, January.
    3. David Atkin & Amit K. Khandelwal & Adam Osman, 2017. "Exporting and Firm Performance: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(2), pages 551-615.
    4. Eric A. Verhoogen, 2008. "Trade, Quality Upgrading, and Wage Inequality in the Mexican Manufacturing Sector," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(2), pages 489-530.
    5. Stéphane Bonhomme & Thibaut Lamadon & Elena Manresa, 2019. "A Distributional Framework for Matched Employer Employee Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 87(3), pages 699-739, May.
    6. Thomas Sampson, 2016. "Dynamic Selection: An Idea Flows Theory of Entry, Trade, and Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(1), pages 315-380.
    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. Yang, Yumeng & Li, Yunong & Sheng, Han & Zhou, Mao, 2026. "Producing more, reproducing less: The demographic costs of China's export success," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).

    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. Ma, Xiao & Muendler, Marc-Andreas & Nakab, Alejandro, 2020. "Learning by Exporting and Wage Profiles: New Evidence from Brazil," MPRA Paper 109497, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 31 Aug 2021.
    2. Matthias Aistleitner & Stephan Puehringer, 2020. "Exploring the trade (policy) narratives in economic elite discourse," ICAE Working Papers 110, Johannes Kepler University, Institute for Comprehensive Analysis of the Economy.
    3. Pian Shu & Claudia Steinwender, 2019. "The Impact of Trade Liberalization on Firm Productivity and Innovation," Innovation Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(1), pages 39-68.
    4. Xiao Ma & Alejandro Nakab & Yiran Zhang, 2026. "Skill Acquisition and the Gains From Trade: A Cross‐Country Quantitative Analysis," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 67(1), pages 127-150, February.
    5. Chen, Natalie & Juvenal, Luciana, 2022. "Markups, quality, and trade costs," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    6. Christopher Hansman & Jonas Hjort & Gianmarco León-Ciliotta & Matthieu Teachout, 2020. "Vertical Integration, Supplier Behavior, and Quality Upgrading among Exporters," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(9), pages 3570-3625.
    7. Artuc, Erhan & Bastos, Paulo & Rijkers, Bob, 2023. "Robots, tasks, and trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    8. Chiara Binelli, 2008. "Returns to Education and Increasing Wage Inequality in Latin America," Working Paper series 30_08, Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis.
    9. Raveh, Ohad & Reshef, Ariell, 2016. "Capital imports composition, complementarities, and the skill premium in developing countries," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 183-206.
    10. Jonas Hjort & Golvine de Rochambeau & Vinayak Iyer & Fei Ao, 2020. "Informational Barriers to Market Access: Experimental Evidence from Liberian Firms," NBER Working Papers 27662, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Dorothee Hillrichs, 2025. "Foreign Market Access’ Role for Export Quality," CESifo Working Paper Series 11906, CESifo.
    12. Benjamin Friedrich & Costas Meghir & Lisa Laun & Luigi Pistaferri, 2018. "Earnings Dynamics and Firm-Level Shocks," 2018 Meeting Papers 536, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    13. Matthias Aistleitner & Stephan Puehringer, 2023. "Biased Trade Narratives and Its Influence on Development Studies: A Multi-level Mixed-Method Approach," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 35(6), pages 1322-1346, December.
    14. Jie Bai & Ludovica Gazze & Yukun Wang, 2019. "Collective Reputation in Trade: Evidence from the Chinese Dairy Industry," NBER Working Papers 26283, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Ralph Stinebrickner & Todd Stinebrickner & Paul Sullivan, 2019. "Job Tasks, Time Allocation, and Wages," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 37(2), pages 399-433.
    16. Anil K. Jain & Siddharth Kothari, 2025. "Why are Manufacturing Plants Smaller in Developing Countries? Theory and Evidence from India," International Finance Discussion Papers 1417, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    17. Amodio, Francesco & de Roux, Nicolás, 2021. "Labor Market Power in Developing Countries: Evidence from Colombian Plants," CEPR Discussion Papers 16180, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    18. Bloom, Nick & Manova, Kalina & Teng Sun, Stephen & Van Reenen, John & Yu, Zhihong, 2018. "Managing trade: evidence from China and the US," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 88703, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    19. Carlo Perroni & Davide Suverato, 2023. "Skills scarcity and export intensity," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 56(2), pages 719-757, May.
    20. Carlo Lombardo & Leonardo Peñaloza-Pacheco, 2025. "Skilled Immigration and Firm-Level Upgrading as Exports Boosters in a Developing Country," CESifo Working Paper Series 11645, CESifo.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • F12 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies; Fragmentation
    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade
    • F16 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade and Labor Market Interactions
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search

    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:ces:ceswps:_12350. 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: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.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.