Workers beneath the Floodgates: Low-Wage Import Competition and Workers’ Adjustment
利用丹麦制造业工人数据，研究中国加入WTO后低工资进口冲击对工人收入和就业的长期负面影响，发现服务业工作不稳定是主要调整障碍，尤其影响具有制造业特定教育和职业的工人。
Abstract Using employee-employer matched data, I analyze the impact of a low-wage trade shock on manufacturing workers in a high-wage country, Denmark, and how they adjust to the shock over a decade. I derive causal effects by exploiting the dismantling of the Multifiber Arrangement quotas on products from China upon its WTO accession as a quasi-natural experiment and use within-industry, within-occupation heterogeneity in workers’ exposure to this shock. I find significant negative long-run effects on earnings and employment trajectories and identify job instability in the service sector as a main adjustment friction, concentrated among workers with manufacturing-specific education and occupation. The results establish the importance of specific human capital in trade adjustment and provide evidence of skill upgrading as workers rebuild lost human capital through education.