Search Google

4/30/15

On the pluses and minuses of trade

Bill Galston give a nice summary of recent research on trade:

In a 2013 study published in the American Economic Review, respected labor economists David Autor, David Dorn, and Gordon Hanson found that competition from Chinese imports was responsible for one quarter of the decline in U.S. manufacturing employment between 1990 and 2007. This competition depressed wages, labor-force participation and household earnings while increasing expenses for state and federal transfer programs.

Two 2014 papers flesh out these conclusions. In the Review of Economics and Statistics,Avraham Ebenstein,Ann Harrison,Margaret McMillan and Shannon Phillips reported that between 1983 and 2002, globalization put downward pressure on wages by forcing American workers out of manufacturing into lower-paying jobs in other sectors, leading to real wage losses of 12% to 17%. In a second paper extending the analysis to 2008, these economists found that offshoring and the threat of offshoring independently reduce wages in the affected occupations.

None of this new research represents an argument against high-quality trade treaties. But it does underscore the common-sense proposition that the United States’ increasing exposure to the global economy since the late 1970s has created losers as well as winners.



from AEI » Latest Content http://ift.tt/1Q3eic9

0 التعليقات:

Post a Comment

Search Google

Blog Archive