%0 Report
        %A Görg, Holger
%A Strobl, Eric
        %T Relative Wages, Openness and Skill-Biased Technological Change
        %D 2002
        %8 2002 Oct
        %I Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        %C Bonn
        %7 IZA Discussion Paper
        %N 596
        %U https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp596
        %X Standard neo-classical trade theory predicts that trade liberalisation should cause a fall in
wage inequality in developing countries through a decrease in the relative demand for skilled
labour. Recent studies of a number of developing countries, however, find evidence to the
contrary. Using a panel of manufacturing firms in the 1990s we investigate whether skillbiased
technological change induced through imports of technology-intensive capital goods
or export activity may provide an explanation for the increase in relative wages of skilled
workers in Ghana. Estimates of a skilled worker relative demand equation based on a
translog cost function show that changes in technology through a greater inflow of foreign
machinery is found to be indeed consistent with skill-biased technological change in Ghana.

        %K wage inequality
%K trade liberalisation
%K skill-biased technological change