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

本课题的目的是研究德国的劳动者个体如何应对贸易冲击，特别是中国和东欧在世界经济中的崛起。利用劳动经济学和国际贸易中最近发展起来的方法，我们衡量了特定工人所在部门的进口和出口风险。然后，我们将这一部门暴露与不同的个人劳动力市场结果。为了梳理出贸易的因果效应，我们使用了一种工具变量技术，将第三国贸易流视为德国各行业进口风险敞口的工具。我们的具体重点是三种不同的、相互关联的调整机制，我们已经确定了现有文献中的差距，以及进一步研究的必要性：（1）就业和工作稳定性;（2）工资和工资不平等;（3）劳动力的地域流动性。在第一个方面，以往的研究表明，在出口风险较高的部门，平均预期就业持续时间往往较高。如果工作时间的总体增加是由生产性出口公司的扩张驱动的，而这反过来又导致其在职工人的就业关系稳定，那么这与最近的国际贸易理论是一致的。为了研究这一假设，我们的目标是仔细分析的工人建立对预期的工作时间是积极的影响贸易曝光。具体而言，就业持续时间更积极的反应，在这些机构，传统的出口商，或在这些机构，转换为出口商的贸易冲击？在第二个方面，我们的主要目的是详细分析贸易冲击如何影响德国的工资，并根据个人所属的企业类型进行区分。在估计了东部崛起对个人工资的因果影响后，我们提供了一个详细的比较与以前的结果，属性的大部分观察到的工资不平等的增加在德国技能偏向的技术变革。此外，我们将我们的研究结果与最近关于工作极化和任务离岸的文献相结合。最后，在第三个方面，我们考察了贸易冲击是否会引起个人的流动性反应，以及这些反应的影响。为此，我们首先建立了一个理论框架，在这个框架中，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理劳动力流动来应对。当地的住房价格会根据这些劳动力流动的诱导波进行调整，因此贸易冲击在这些价格中被内生地资本化。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，以了解个人的调整幅度。

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.