Employment Responses to Global Markets

该项目将模拟和跟踪个别工人和公司对全球经济环境变化的反应。为此，该项目将使用巴西1986年至2001年期间确定的公司和确定的雇员的广泛和异常丰富的匹配数据集。工人数据提供工资信息和月度就业记录，包括所有正式成立的巴西公司机构员工的详细人口统计信息，以及雇用原因、填补的职业和离职原因的信息。使用税务识别符，这些工人的记录与可以获得资产负债表数字、投资、外国要素使用、出口和出口的详细信息的制造公司样本相匹配。巴西在1990年的大规模贸易自由化和1999年1月60%的汇率贬值提供了世界市场敞口的显著变化。随之而来的是外国竞争的变化，以及巴西制造公司之间同期的技术变化，伴随着大量的劳动力转移。初步研究表明，裁员和招聘与交易风险敞口密切相关。然而，与经典和现代贸易理论或无摩擦的宏观经济模型相反，由此产生的流离失所可能导致重新雇用之前的较长延迟，以及具有个人或部门比较优势的公司开始吸收被取代的工人之前的长时间调整期。该项目旨在阐明工人在就业期间和离职后与公司的不同互动，并探索巴西在世界市场的敞口对其劳动力市场表现的影响。与合著者一起，受赠者将调查1990年巴西贸易自由化的劳动力再分配，分析在工作之间存在内生转换和不断变化的世界市场敞口下的技能回报，评估诱致性置换的收益影响，并评估通过工人分离和不完美的再收缩而传播的宏观经济冲击。除了对产出市场份额重新分配和劳动力流动统计的先前评估之外，本项目的数据使受赠者能够跟踪行业内和跨行业的公司类型之间的流动，并在单个工人水平上估计分离风险、重组可能性和随后的收入。该项目将阐明自由主义经济在什么时间范围内可以期望要素市场根据比较优势成功地重新配置资源，这一过程是与具有某些特征的工人的暂时性或永久性收入损失有关，以及如何通过有针对性的改革来缓解转型过程。工业化国家和发展中国家的公开辩论都隐藏着对全球一体化对国内劳动力市场影响的极大担忧。世界贸易的扩张引发了人们的担忧，即各种技能水平的工作在不同地区变得越来越容易被替代。这个关于巴西劳动力市场表现的项目有助于理解就业对全球变化的反应，为详细的计量经济学分析提供足够的匹配的雇主-雇员数据。研究结果将与考虑进一步自由化的国家的贸易政策构成相关，并可为设计可与美国贸易调整援助相媲美的劳动力市场工具提供参考。

The project will model and trace the responses of individual workers and firms to changes inthe global economic environment. To this end, the project will use an extensive and unusuallyrich matched data set on identified firms and identified employees between 1986 and 2001for Brazil. The worker data offer wage information and monthly employment records, andinclude detailed demographic information on the employees at establishments of all formallyestablished Brazilian firms, along with information on the reasons for hires, the occupationsfilled, and causes for separations. Using tax identifiers, these worker records were matchedto a sample of manufacturing firms for which detailed information on balance-sheet figures,investments, foreign factor uses, exports, and exits are available.Brazil's large-scale trade liberalization in 1990 and a 60-percent exchange rate devaluationin January 1999 provide salient variation in world market exposure. Resulting changes inforeign competition, and contemporaneous technical changes among Brazilian manufactur-ing firms, were accompanied by substantial labor displacements. Pilot research suggests thatlayoffs and hires are significantly related to trade exposure. However, contrary to classic andmodern trade theory or frictionless macroeconomic models, resulting displacements can leadto extended delays before rehiring and long adjustment periods before firms with an individ-ual or sectoral comparative advantage start to absorb displaced workers.Objectives and intellectual merit. The project aims to illuminate workers' varying interac-tions with firms during employment and after separations and to explore the consequencesof Brazil's exposure to world markets for its labor market performance. Together with co-authors, the grantee will investigate labor reallocations in response to Brazil's trade liberal-ization in 1990, analyze the returns to skills in the presence of endogenous switching betweenjobs and under changing world market exposure, evaluate the earnings effects of induceddisplacements, and assessmacroeconomic shock propagation through worker separation andimperfect re-contracting.Beyond prior assessments of output market share reallocations and labor turnover statis-tics, data of the present project allow the grantee to trace flows between types of firms withinand across sectors, and to estimate at the individual worker level separation risks, rehiringlikelihoods and subsequent earnings. The project will elucidate at what time horizon a lib-eralizing economy can expect factor markets to successfully reallocate resources accordingto comparative advantage, whether this process is associated with transitory or permanentearnings losses for workers with certain characteristics, and how the transition process mightbe alleviated through targeted reforms.Broader impact. The public debate across industrialized and developing countries alike ex-hibits much concern with the impact of global integration on domestic labor markets. Theexpansion of world trade raises fears that jobs at all skill levels become increasingly sub-stitutable across locations. This project on Brazil's labor market performance contributes tothe understanding of employment responses to global change in offering adequate matchedemployer-employee data for detailed econometric analysis. Findings will be relevant to theconduct of trade policy in countries that contemplate further liberalization, and can informthe design of labor market instruments comparable to the U.S. Trade Adjustment Assistance.