Human capital, exports, and wages

Working paper

This paper tests whether manufacturing exports pay more to educated workers in an effort to ascertain whether the productivity of human capital is raised by exports. Using a panel of matched employer-employee data from Morocco, we fail to find convincing evidence that exporters pay more to educated workers. Although exporters pay more on average, much of the wage differential can be explained by the fact that exporters have a larger workforce and more capital. We also find that the wages of educated workers do not increase faster among exporters. Finally, educated workers who start working for an exporter do not experience a larger wage increase relative to their previous job. We discuss why our results differ from the literature.

Authors: Fafchamps, M

• Publication status: Published
• Publisher: University of Oxford
• Series: Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series
• Publication date: 2007-03-01
• Paper number: GPRG-WPS-069
• Keywords: wage earnings; manufacturing; international trade; Morocco