Search Results
Working Paper
Trade and the skill premium in developing countries: the role of intermediate goods and some evidence from Peru
The rise in income inequality in developing countries after trade liberalization has been a puzzle for trade theory, which predicts the opposite effect. The authors present a model with imported intermediate goods in which the relative wages of skilled labor can rise due to higher imports of inputs or due to skill-biased technological change. The evidence from Peru in the post-liberalization phase in the early 1990s supports the skilled-biased technological change hypothesis. The authors find that most of the decrease in the blue-collar wage share in the manufacturing industries can be ...
Briefing
Understanding the Lack of Skill Specialization in Peru
Jobs in Peru use a larger number of skills than comparable jobs in the U.S. This lack of specialization is consistent with firms’ hiring of "toderos" (workers with many skills, do-it-alls), given the high levels of worker reallocation.Labor markets in poorer countries are characterized by higher worker reallocation rates.1 In richer economies, a dynamic labor market that seamlessly reallocates workers to jobs goes hand in hand with robust productivity growth and sustained income growth.2 Instead, in poorer countries, the brisk pace of reallocation is accompanied by high unemployment and ...
Journal Article
Interview with Hernando de Soto
Journal Article
Money demand and inflation in Peru, 1979-1991
The author, a junior at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, won the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland?s first annual undergraduate economics essay competition in 2000. His essay, now reprinted as an Economic Commentary, explores the factors that affected money demand during a period of terrible hyperinflation in Peru and considers whether the government caused the hyperinflation by printing too much money in order to increase seigniorage revenue. Hyperinflation may seem to be a problem most countries have learned to avoid, but the leaders of many emerging economies face tough financial ...