TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Görg, Holger
AU  - Strobl, Eric
        TI  - Relative Wages, Openness and Skill-Biased Technological Change
        PY  - 2002/Oct/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 596
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp596
        AB  - 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.

        KW  - wage inequality
KW  - trade liberalisation
KW  - skill-biased technological change
        ER  -