This volume was prepared by Sebastian Benz while he was working at the Ifo Institute. It was completed in December 2013 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It includes five self-contained chapters. All chapters discuss different...

The paper empirically examines three possible reasons for the high and rising unemployment of low-skilled employees in Germany: (i) an upsurge in interindustry trade, (ii) a skill-biased technical change, and (iii) a failure of labour market adjustment. The empirical analyses indicate that an...

Economic development is accompanied by structural change. The trade theoretic literature offers two major hypotheses – i. e., the factor-endowment and the total-factor-productivity-- for explaining the stylized facts of structural change. This note revisits these hypotheses. In particular, it...

In this paper we theoretically derive an international Rybczynski matrix. Its elements indicate the aggregate output change in a country when endowment with one or more factors in the same or another country is increased. This allows us to characterize theproduction structure in 11 countries of...

We reconsider technology transfer à la Kojima–Ozawa originating from a developed (North) country’s comparatively disadvantaged industry and going to developing (South) country’s comparatively advantaged industry. We study the effects of free technology transfer, technology transfer via...

This paper integrates institutionally determined wage rigidities into an otherwise standard Heckscher-Ohlin model of international trade. It accounts for differences in individual productivities and their implications for individual wage incomes and demand for education. Although preserving the...

This article analyzes changes is skilled labor demand associated with economic liberalization in Mexico. A trend that has now become more evident is an increasing wage inequality that favors more highly skilled workers. Based on the application of Katz and Murphy’s supply and demand model...

Arguably the most important development in recent decades in US factor markets is the decline in the relative wage of the unskilled. By contrast, in Europe it is undoubtedly the rise and persistence of unemployment. Technology has been identified as a key reason for the rising US wage...

We consider trade between a flexible wage America and a rigid real wage Europe. In a benchmark case, a move from autarky to free trade doubles the European unemployment rate, while it raises the American unskilled wage to the high European level.

This paper addresses an issue that has received a great deal of attention in recent years, both from international trade economists and from labor economists: What has caused the relative wage of skilled labor compared to unskilled labor in the United States to increase through the 1980s and 1990s?