Who Gains from Trade Reform? Some Remaining Puzzles
讨论了贸易改革影响的三个未解问题：开放政策与长期增长的关系脆弱、贸易改革对发展中国家就业影响小、以及墨西哥贸易改革后工资不平等上升的悖论。
This paper focuses on three unresolved issues with regard to the impact of trade reform. First, many studies linking trade reform to long run growth are surprisingly fragile. To illustrate the problems with this literature, we examine a popular measure of openness recently introduced by Sachs and Warner [Sachs, J., Warner, A., 1995. Economic reform and the process of global integration. Brookings Papers on Economics Activity 1, pp. 1–117]. We show that their measure fails to establish a robust link between more open trade policies and long run growth. The second puzzle we identify is the small impact of trade reform on employment in developing countries. Finally, we analyze evidence on the relationship between trade reform and rising wage inequality, focusing on the 1985 Mexican trade reform. Wage inequality in Mexico rose after the reform, which is puzzling in a Heckscher–Ohlin context if Mexico has a comparative advantage in producing low skill-intensive goods.