Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/2890 
Year of Publication: 
2002
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 596
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Standard neo-classical trade theory predicts that trade liberalisation should cause a fall in wage inequality in developing countries through a decrease in the relative demand for skilled labour. Recent studies of a number of developing countries, however, find evidence to the contrary. Using a panel of manufacturing firms in the 1990s we investigate whether skillbiased technological change induced through imports of technology-intensive capital goods or export activity may provide an explanation for the increase in relative wages of skilled workers in Ghana. Estimates of a skilled worker relative demand equation based on a translog cost function show that changes in technology through a greater inflow of foreign machinery is found to be indeed consistent with skill-biased technological change in Ghana.
Subjects: 
trade liberalisation
skill-biased technological change
wage inequality
JEL: 
F14
O33
J31
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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