Globalization, technological change and labor demand: a firm-level analysis for Turkey

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MESCHİ E., TAYMAZ E., VİVARELLİ M.

REVIEW OF WORLD ECONOMICS, cilt.152, sa.4, ss.655-680, 2016 (SSCI) identifier identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 152 Sayı: 4
  • Basım Tarihi: 2016
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1007/s10290-016-0256-y
  • Dergi Adı: REVIEW OF WORLD ECONOMICS
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.655-680
  • Anahtar Kelimeler: Skill-biased technological change, International technology transfer, GMM-SYS, RESEARCH-AND-DEVELOPMENT, DEVELOPING-COUNTRIES, WAGE INEQUALITY, SKILLED LABOR, PANEL-DATA, TRADE LIBERALIZATION, INTERNATIONAL-TRADE, DYNAMIC-MODELS, EMPLOYMENT, INNOVATION
  • Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

This paper studies the interlinked relationship between globalization and technological upgrading in affecting employment and wages of skilled and unskilled workers in a middle income developing country. It exploits a unique longitudinal firm-level database that covers all manufacturing firms in Turkey over the 1992-2001 period. Turkey is taken as an example of a developing economy that, in that period, had been technologically advancing and becoming increasingly integrated with the world market. The empirical analysis is performed at firm level within a dynamic framework using a model that depicts the employment and wage trends for skilled and unskilled workers separately. In particular, the System Generalized Method of Moments (GMM-SYS) procedure is applied to a panel dataset of about 15,000 firms. Our results confirm the theoretical expectation that developing countries face the phenomena of skill-biased technological change and skill-enhancing trade, both leading to increasing the employment and wage gap between skilled and unskilled workers. In particular, a strong evidence of a relative skill bias emerges: both domestic and imported technologies increase the relative demand for skilled workers more than the demand for the unskilled. "Learning by exporting" also appears to have a relative skill- biased impact, while FDI imply an absolute skill bias.