EBSLG

 

 
European Business Schools Librarian's Group
Home About Series Subject/JEL codes Advanced Search
Kiel Institute for World Economics Kiel Working Papers, Kiel Institute for World Economics

No 1831:
Trade, Education, and The Shrinking Middle Class

Emily Blanchard and Gerald Willmann

Abstract: We develop a new model of trade in which educational institutions drive comparative advantage and determine the distribution of human capital within and across countries. Our framework exploits a multiplicity of sectors and the continuous support of human capital choices to demonstrate that freer trade can induce crowding out of the middle occupations towards the skill acquisition extremes in one country, and simultaneous expansion of middle-income industries in another. Individual gains from trade may be non-monotonic in workers' ability, and middle ability agents can lose the most from trade liberalization. Comparing trade and education policy, we find that targeted education subsidies are more effective than tariffs as a means to preserve "middle class" jobs, while uniform educational subsidies have no effect

Keywords: Trade and Education Policy, Skill Acquisition, Education, Income Distribution; (follow links to similar papers)

JEL-Codes: F11,; F13,; F15,; F16; (follow links to similar papers)

41 pages, February 2013

Before downloading any of the electronic versions below you should read our statement on copyright.
Download GhostScript for viewing Postscript files and the Acrobat Reader for viewing and printing pdf files.

Downloadable files:

KWP_1831.pdf    PDF-file
Download Statistics


Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson () or Helena Lundin ().

Programing by
Design Joakim Ekebom

Handle: RePEc:kie:kieliw:1831 This page was generated on 2015-03-29 21:03:30