Trade and the Labor Market ─ Effect on Wage Inequality in Japan

Main results are as follows: First, both relative wage and relative employment of nonproduction to production workers, and college graduates to high-school graduates increased as a trend since the 1980s, suggesting a relative demand shift toward skilled labor. Second, analysis using input-output tables revealed that employment reduction due to increased imports is greater in production workers than in nonproduction workers, and that employment increase due to increased exports is greater in nonproduction workers than in production workers, suggesting the comparative advantage being at work in line with the Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson model. Third, analysis using factor content of trade revealed that increased trade during 1995-2005 especially with Asian countries raised the relative wage of nonproduction to production workers in the aggregated manufacturing sector by 0.023 points (1.400 to 1.422), or by 1.6 percent in terms of rate of change. This estimation result suggests that increased trade in this period played a certain role in widening wage inequality between nonproduction to production workers. These results contribute to a deeper understanding of the effect of globalization on labor market in the field of economics.