Wage Inequality in the United Kingdom: Trade and/or Technology?

摘要

The econometric literature on the wage-trade debate of the 1990s in the United Kingdom and the United States focused on globalisation and technology as the alternative causes of the skill premium, by examining manufacturing data only. The thesis of this paper is that sector-biased technical change can be considered as a further or probably as the main cause of the increasing skill premium, if skill-intensive services such as financial, insurance and communication services are taken into account. Needless to say, the growth of these sectors has been exponential in the last twenty years. In addition, if technical change is imported, then the distinction between globalisation and technology as alternative causes of the increasing wage gap loses its importance. The worldwide development of information technology, the growth in electronics, and the expansion of both foreign direct investment and the trade volume in intermediate inputs all suggest that globalisation and technology are part of the same phenomenon, which has heralded a new era of development for nations and has to be examined further.