تجارت و نابرابری در کشورهای در حال توسعه: یک تحلیل تعادل عمومی

Developing and newly industrialized countries that have experienced the sharpest increases in wage inequality are those whose export shares have shifted towards more skill-intensive goods. We argue that this can be explained by technological catch-up. We develop this insight using a model that features both Ricardian and endowments-based comparative advantage. In this model, Southern catch-up causes production of the least skill-intensive Northern goods to migrate South (where they become the most skill-intensive Southern goods). This raises wage inequality in both the South and the North. We provide empirical evidence that strongly supports this causal mechanism: Southern catch-up exacerbates Southern inequality by redirecting Southern export shares towards more skill-intensive goods.

Among developing and newly industrialized countries, the Freeman and Oostendrop (2001) database shows that rising wage inequality during the 1983–1997 period was a common occurrence. This is sharply at odds with the Stolper–Samuelson theorem which predicts that Southern inequality should have fallen. In trying to explain this complex evolution of Southern inequality, we pointed out that there is a positive correlation across Southern countries between the growth in wage inequality and the shifting of export shares towards the South's most skill-intensive goods. This suggested to us that trends in wage inequality across developing and newly industrialized countries are linked via general equilibrium trade movements triggered by technological catch-up. To model this, we married the Ricardian international technology differences model (Dornbusch et al., 1977) with the Heckscher–Ohlin model (Dornbusch et al., 1980). In our model, technological catch-up causes production of the least skill-intensive Northern goods to migrate South where they become the most skill-intensive Southern goods. Thus, the demand for skills and hence wage inequality rise in both regions. This mechanism is closely related to that described by Feenstra and Hanson (1996). We found empirical support for three predictions associated with this mechanism. First, Southern catch-up shifts export shares towards the South's most skill-intensive goods (β̂γ>0). Second, the resulting shift in export shares increases the level of wage inequality (β̂ΔZ>0). Third, Southern catch-up does not directly raise wage inequality. Rather, Southern catch-up raises wage inequality only indirectly by raising the export shares of the South's most skill-intensive goods.