Agro-Manufactured Export Prices, Wages and Unemployment

Porto, Guido

Washington, DC:World Bank

关键词: ACTIVE LABOR;    ADJUSTMENT COSTS;    AGGREGATE UNEMPLOYMENT;    AGRICULTURAL PRICES;    AGRICULTURE;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-4489
RP-ID  :  WPS4489

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This paper estimates the impacts ofworld agricultural trade liberalization on wages, employmentand unemployment in Argentina, a country with positive netagricultural exports and high unemployment rates. In theestimation of these wage and unemployment responses, theempirical model allows for individual labor supply responsesand for adjustment costs in labor demand. The findings showthat a 10 percent increase in the price of agriculturalexports would cause an increase in the Argentine employmentprobability of 1.36 percentage points, matched by a declinein the unemployment probability of 0.75 percentage pointsand an increase in labor market participation of 0.61percentage points. Further, the unemployment rate woulddecline by 1.23 percentage points (by almost 10 percent).Expected wages would increase by 10.3 percent, an effectthat is mostly driven by higher employment probabilities.This indicates that the bulk of the impacts of trade reformsoriginates in household responses in the presence ofadjustment costs, and that failure to account for them maylead to significant biases in the welfare evaluation oftrade policy.