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Trade and Wage Inequality in Developing Countries: South-South Trade Matter

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  • Julien Gourdon

    (CERDI - Centre d'Études et de Recherches sur le Développement International - UdA - Université d'Auvergne - Clermont-Ferrand I - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

The relationship between trade liberalization and inequality has received considerable attention in recent years. The primary purpose of this paper is to present new results on the sources of wage inequalities in manufacturing taking into account South-South (S-S) trade. Globalization not only leads to increasing North-South (N-S) trade, but the direction and composition of trade has also changed. More trade is carried out between developing countries. We observe increasing wage inequality is more due to the South-South trade liberalization than to the classical trade liberalization with northern countries. The second purpose is to elucidate the link between the direction of trade and technological change, arguing that it might explain why we obtain different results for South-South trade and North-South trade on wage inequality. A part of this increasing wage inequality due to S-S trade comes from the development of N-S trade relationship in S-S trade which increases wage inequality in middle income developing countries. However the fact that S-S trade is more skill intensive sector oriented increase wage inequality for all developing countries.

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  • Julien Gourdon, 2011. "Trade and Wage Inequality in Developing Countries: South-South Trade Matter," Working Papers halshs-00557113, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-00557113
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    2. Ucal, Meltem & Bilgin, Mehmet Huseyin, 2009. "Income Inequality and FDI in Turkey: FM-OLS (Phillips-Hansen) Estimation and ARDL Approach to Cointegration," MPRA Paper 48765, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Mr. Alberto Behar, 2013. "The Endogenous Skill Bias of Technical Change and Inequality in Developing Countries," IMF Working Papers 2013/050, International Monetary Fund.
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    5. Meltem Ucal & Alfred Albert Haug & Mehmet Hüseyin Bilgin, 2016. "Income inequality and FDI: evidence with Turkish data," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(11), pages 1030-1045, March.
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    7. García Muñoz, Teresa María & Milgram Baleix, Juliette & Odeh, Omar Odeh, 2020. "Inequality in Latin America: The role of the nature of trade and partners," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 14, pages 1-35.
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    Keywords

    international trade; Wage Inequality; Skill-biased technical change;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O3 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights
    • J3 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs
    • F1 - International Economics - - Trade

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