TY  - JOUR
AU  - Haskel,Jonathan
AU  - Slaughter,Matthew J.
TI  - Trade, Technology and U.K. Wage Inequality
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 6978
PY  - 1999
Y2  - February 1999
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6978
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6978.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Jonathan Haskel
Imperial College Business School
Tanaka Building, Room 296
London SW7 2AZ
UK
Tel: 44-20 7594 8563
Fax: 44 20 7594 9173
E-Mail: j.haskel@imperial.ac.uk

Matthew J. Slaughter
Tuck School of Business
Dartmouth College
100 Tuck Hall
Hanover, NH 03755
Tel: 603/646-2939
Fax: 603/646-0995
E-Mail: matthew.j.slaughter@dartmouth.edu
AB  - The U.K. skill premium fell from the 1950s to the late 1970s and then rose very sharply.  This paper examines the contributions to these relative wage movements of international trade and technical change.  We first measure trade as changes in product prices and technical change as TFP growth.  Then we relate price and TFP changes to a set of underlying factors.  Among a number of results, we find that changes in prices, not TFP, were the major force behind the rise in inequality in the 1980s.  We also find that although increased trade pressure has raised technical change, its effect on wage inequality was not quantitatively significant.
ER  -