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dc.titleThe Effect of Chinese Import Competition on El Salvador’s Labor Market
dc.contributor.authorLi, Kun
dc.contributor.authorMesquita Moreira, Mauricio
dc.contributor.orgunitProductivity, Trade and Innovation Sector
dc.coverageChina
dc.coverageEl Salvador
dc.date.available2019-11-25T15:00:00
dc.date.issue2019-11-24T00:00:00
dc.description.abstractIn this paper, we relate outcomes of El Salvadors local labor markets to their exposure to Chinese import competition. Using annual household surveys for 2000 to 2014, we construct a panel dataset of 61 local labor markets over 15 years to study three sets of outcomes: manufacturing employment, labor informality, and average wage. We find that rising Chinese import competition have negatively affected manufacturing and nontradable employment. Some workers were pushed into agriculture, while others were forced out of the active labor force. Further analysis shows that it is the unskilled workers that were pushed out of manufacturing, while more skilled and professional workers were not affected by Chinese competition. We also find that as workers, especially low-skill ones, have shifted from manufacturing into agriculture due to Chinese import competition, informality has decreased in the former sector and increased in the latter. This change in labor informality is mainly observed among unskilled workers. The informality of workers with high-school diplomas is not affected by competition from China. We do not find that Chinese import competition has a significant impact on the average wages of formal or informal workers or on those of unskilled workers at the conventional significance level.
dc.format.extent25
dc.identifier.doihttp://dx.doi.org/10.18235/0002021
dc.identifier.urlhttps://publications.iadb.org/publications/english/document/The_Effect_of_Chinese_Import_Competition_on_El_Salvador’s_Labor_Market_en.pdf
dc.language.isoen
dc.mediumAdobe PDF
dc.publisherInter-American Development Bank
dc.subjectLabor Policy
dc.subjectTrade Policy
dc.subjectWorkforce and Employment
dc.subjectManufacturing Industry
dc.subjectLabor Market
dc.subjectWage
dc.subjectInformal Labor
dc.subjectImport
dc.subject.jelcodeF14 - Empirical Studies of Trade
dc.subject.jelcodeF16 - Trade and Labor Market Interactions
dc.subject.jelcodeJ46 - Informal Labor Markets
dc.subject.jelcodeJ23 - Labor Demand
dc.subject.keywordsChinese import competition; employment; labor market, informality
dc.typeWorking Papers
idb.identifier.pubnumberIDB-WP-01081
idb.operationRG-K1077
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