1887

OECD Trade Policy Papers

This series is designed to make available to a wider readership selected trade policy studies prepared for use within the OECD.

NB. No. 1 to No. 139 were released under the previous series title OECD Trade Policy Working Papers.

English

Services imports and labour in Viet Nam

This paper draws on detailed firm-level and worker-level information to explore the link between services imports and employment dynamics in the case of Viet Nam. The econometric analysis consists of two parts. First, data covering formal firms are exploited to investigate the relationship between sector-level services import intensity and firm-level employment and firm-level average wages. The second part is conducted at the level of workers and also covers informal workers. The results show that sector-level services import intensity positively affects firm-level average wages of Vietnamese formal services firms, whereas a small negative effect on firm-level employment is observed. For manufacturing firms, there is no conclusive evidence regarding the association between services import intensity and firm-level employment. The worker-level analysis identifies a positive wage effect of occupation-level exposure to services imports on domestic workers in foreign-owned businesses in all sectors. The results also suggest that higher skilled workers might be more likely to benefit from services imports. This paper provides support for an approach that combines an emphasis on lowering firms’ costs of sourcing foreign services inputs with efforts to strengthen SMEs’ capabilities and improve workers’ skills.

English

Keywords: wages, individual and firm-level data, employment, trade, worker heterogeneity
JEL: F16: International Economics / Trade / Trade and Labor Market Interactions; J30: Labor and Demographic Economics / Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs / Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs: General; J21: Labor and Demographic Economics / Demand and Supply of Labor / Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure; C26: Mathematical and Quantitative Methods / Single Equation Models; Single Variables / Single Equation Models: Single Variables: Instrumental Variables (IV) Estimation; F61: International Economics / Economic Impacts of Globalization / Economic Impacts of Globalization: Microeconomic Impacts; F14: International Economics / Trade / Empirical Studies of Trade
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