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http://hdl.handle.net/10419/35371
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| Title: | | Trade openness and the demand for skills: evidence from Turkish microdata  |
| Authors: | | Meschi, Elena Taymaz, Erol Vivarelli, Marco |
| Issue Date: | | 2008 |
| Series/Report no.: | | IZA discussion papers 3887 |
| Abstract: | | In this paper we report evidence on the relationship between trade openness, technology adoption and relative demand for skilled labour in the Turkish manufacturing sector, using firm-level data over the period 1980-2001. In a dynamic panel data setting using a unique database of 17,462 firms, we estimate an augmented cost share equation whereby the wage bill share of skilled workers in a given firm is related to international exposure and technology adoption. Overall, results suggest that trade openness and technology play a key role in shifting the demand for labour towards more skilled workers within each firm. Technology-related variables (domestic R&D expenditures and technological transfer from abroad) are positive and significantly related to skill upgrading, as are the involvement of foreign capital in a firm's ownership and the propensity to export. Moreover, firms belonging to those sectors that most raised their imported inputs also experienced a higher increase in the labour cost share of skilled workers. This finding is consistent with the idea that imports by a middle-income country imply a transfer of new technologies that are more skill-intensive than those previously in use in domestic markets. This idea is reinforced by the finding that only imported inputs from industrialised countries - where the potential for innovation diffusion comes from - enter the estimated regression significantly. |
| Subjects: | | Globalisation skills skill-biased technological change technology transfer GMM-SYS |
| JEL: | | F16 O15 O33 |
| Persistent Identifier of the first edition: | | urn:nbn:de:101:1-2008121997 |
| Document Type: | | Working Paper |
| Appears in Collections: | | IZA Discussion Papers, Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit (IZA)
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