The causal impact of trade integration on individual workers: job stability, earnings, and geographical labor mobility

该项目的目的是调查德国的个体工人如何适应贸易冲击，更具体地说，是如何适应中国和东欧在世界经济中的崛起。利用最近在劳动经济学和国际贸易中发展起来的方法，我们衡量了雇用特定工人的部门的进口和出口风险。然后，我们将这种部门风险敞口与不同的个体劳动力市场结果联系起来。为了梳理贸易的因果效应，我们使用工具变量技术，其中第三国贸易流量被视为德国工业进口敞口的工具。我们的具体重点是三个不同的，相互关联的调整机制，我们已经确定了现有文献中的差距，并需要进一步研究：1)就业和工作稳定性，2)工资和工资不平等，以及3)地域劳动力流动。在第一个方面，以前的研究表明，在出口较高的部门，平均预期就业时间往往较高。这与最近的国际贸易理论是一致的，如果工作时间的总增加是由生产性出口公司的扩大所推动的，这反过来又导致其在职工人的就业关系的稳定。为了研究这一假设，我们的目标是仔细分析哪些工人-企业对预期工作持续时间受到贸易暴露的积极影响。具体来说，是传统出口企业的就业持续时间对贸易冲击的反应更积极，还是转型为出口企业的就业持续时间对贸易冲击的反应更积极？在第二个方面，我们的主要目的是提供一个详细的分析，贸易冲击如何影响德国的工资，根据各自个人所属的企业类型进行区分。在估计了东方崛起对个人工资的因果影响之后，我们与之前的结果进行了详细的比较，这些结果将德国观察到的工资不平等的增加大部分归因于技能偏向的技术变革。此外，我们将我们的结果与最近关于工作两极分化和任务外包的文献进行了比较。关键的挑战是调查贸易还是技术是德国工资不平等的主要驱动因素。最后，在第三个方面，我们研究了贸易冲击是否会引发个人流动性反应，以及这些反应的影响是什么。为此，我们首先建立了一个理论框架，其中产业受到外生贸易冲击，而面临这些冲击的工人可以通过地域劳动力流动来应对。当地的房价会随着这些劳动力流动的波动而调整，因此贸易冲击在这些价格中被内生地资本化了。使用德国劳动力市场和新收集的房价数据，我们然后应用这个框架，以了解个人调整边际。

The objective of this project is to investigate how individual workers in Germany adjust to trade shocks, more specifically, to the rise of China and Eastern Europe in the world economy. Drawing on methodology recently developed in labor economics and international trade, we measure the import and the export exposure of the sector in which a particular worker is employed. We then relate this sectoral exposure to different individual labor market outcomes. To tease out the causal effect of trade, we use an instrumental variable technique where third-country trade flows are considered as instruments for import exposure across German industries.Our specific focus are three different, interrelated adjustment mechanisms where we have identified gaps in the existing literature, and the need for further research: 1) Employment and job stability, 2) Wages and wage inequality, and 3) geographical labor mobility.On the first aspect, previous research has shown that average expected employment durations tend to be higher in sectors with higher export exposure. This can be compatible with recent theories of international trade if the aggregate increase in job duration is driven by an expansion of productive exporting firms which, in turn, leads to a stabilization of employment relationships for their incumbent workers. To investigate this hypothesis, we aim to carefully analyze for which worker-establishment pairs expected job durations are positively affected by trade exposure. Specifically, do employment durations react more positively to trade shocks in such establishments that were traditional exporters, or in such establishments that switch to become exporters? On the second aspect, our main aim is to provide a detailed analysis how trade shocks affect wages in Germany, differentiated by the type of establishment the respective individual is affiliated with. After estimating the causal effect of the rise of the East on individual wages, we provide a detailed comparison with previous results that attribute most of the observed increase in wage inequality in Germany to skill-biased technological change. Moreover, we set our results into perspective to the recent literature on job polarization and task offshoring. The key challenge is to investigate if trade or technology is the main driver of wage inequality in Germany.Finally, on the third aspect, we investigate if trade shocks induce individual mobility responses, and what the effects of those responses are. To do so, we first develop a theoretical framework where industries are hit by exogenous trade shocks, and where workers faced with those shocks can respond with geographical labor mobility. Local housing prices adjust to these induced waves of labor mobility, and hence the trade shocks are endogenously capitalized in those prices. Using German labor market and newly collected housing price data, we then apply this framework in order to understand individual adjustment margins.