From Farms to Factories: The Divergent Impact of Agriculture Import Growth on Labour Costs
利用中国数据，研究发现农业进口增长降低了低技能制造业的劳动力成本，并促使劳动力从农业向制造业转移，尤其增加了低技能行业中本地农村工人的比例和企业进入。
This paper studies the differential effect of agriculture trade liberalisation on labor costs for high- vs. low-skilled industries in the manufacturing sector. With data from China, we employ a first-difference regression specification and exploit the fact that labour outflows from the agriculture sector are largely unskilled. We show that increases in agriculture imports are associated with declines in labour cost in the low-skilled manufacturing sector. Further analysis suggests that agricultural imports reallocate labour from the agricultural sector and into the manufacturing sector. Moreover, we observe an increased proportion of local rural workers in low-skill industries following agricultural import growth. At the extensive margin, we identify greater entries of firms in low-skilled industries. Findings in this paper offer evidence on the labour reallocation effect induced by agriculture trade liberalisation.