Trade and U.S. Inequality in the Tokyo Round
研究发现1979-1988年东京回合关税削减解释了美国非生产与生产工人收入差距上升的约20%，对女性、常规职业及技术密集型行业工人影响最大。
Abstract Against a backdrop of sharply rising inequality, the Tokyo Round of the GATT resulted in a 1.6 percentage point reduction in average US tariffs – larger than CUSFTA, NAFTA, and the liberalization accompanying the granting of PNTR to China. We construct a novel IV based on the so-called “Swiss formula” that governed the Tokyo Round tariff liberalization to provide evidence of its effects on imports and inequality. Instrumented tariff reductions explain approximately 20% of the rise in income inequality between non-production and production workers between 1979 and 1988. This effect is largest among women, workers in routine occupations, and workers in more technology-intensive industries, suggesting a complementarity between trade liberalization and skill-biased technological change.