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【6.15 Seminar】Kei-Mu Yi: Global Value Chains and Inequality with Endogenous Labor Supply

2018-11-28

 
Global Value Chains and Inequality with Endogenous Labor Supply

 

 
Time4:00pm-5:30pm, Jun 15, 2018
Venue:Room 359S, Overseas Exchange Center, Peking University
Speaker: Kei-Mu Yi (The M.D. Anderson Professor of Economics at the University of Houston, Research Associate with the ITI and IFM programs at the NBER)
 

【Abstract】

 

We assess the role of global value chains transmitting global integration shocks to aggregate trade as well as distributional outcomes. We develop a multi-country general equilibrium trade model that features multi-stage production, with different stages having different productivities and using factors (occupations) with different intensities. The model also features a Roy mechanism, in which heterogeneous workers endogenously choose their sector and occupation. Country- and worker-level comparative advantages interact. A reduction in trade costs leads to countries specializing in their comparative advantage sectors and production stages. This specialization changes labor demand and also leads to more workers shifting to their comparative advantage sectors and occupations. With a special case of our model, we show that the intensity of the global value chain (GVC) magnifies the aggregate effects of trade liberalization, but it has a non-monotonic effect on the skill premia. We calibrate our model to the U.S., China, and the rest of the world in 2000 and we simulate a decline in China’s costs of trade,designed to mimic China’s entry into the WTO. Our simulation results imply an increase in the skill premium in both the U.S. and China, and the GVC, i.e., stage-level specialization, is critical to this outcome.

 

 

【Speaker】

 

Kei-Mu Yi is the M.D. Anderson Professor of Economics at the University of Houston. He is also a Research Associate with the ITI and IFM programs at the NBER. Before coming to Houston, he held positions with the Federal Reserve Banks of New York, Philadelphia, and Minneapolis. In Philadelphia, he was the head of the Macrosection, and in Minneapolis, he was the Director of Research, and subsequently, special policy adviser to the President. He was an assistant professor of economics at Rice University. He received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago. His past research was on tests of endogenous growth models, the implications of international trade for business cycle co-movement and for structural transformation, and on documenting, and investigating the implications of, the increased vertical specialization of international trade. His publications have appeared in the American Economic Review and the Journal of Political Economy. His current research is on trends in global trade and the implications of international trade for growth and inequality.