Abstract:

The effect of imports and exports has long been a topic of special interest to economists in the modern era of expanding globalization, but few studies have examined the effects on the worker by characteristics. This paper studies the effect of imports and exports by worker groups, evaluating diverse types of employment positions, which was not done in previous research. We match employer-employee data from the Basic Survey on Wage Structure and the Basic Survey of Japanese Business Structure and Activities from 1998 to 2008, and estimate the elasticities of labor demand. Our results indicate that trade increases the demand for well-educated workers for an indefinite period, but imports increase the demand for such workers with a limited-term contract for females. We do not find a significant negative effect from the increase in imports from Asia. The effects are related to differences among types of employment, education levels and gender.