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Title

The Impact of Trade Liberalization on Gender Wage Inequality in South Korea's Labor Market

Document Type

Oral/Panel

Publication Date

5-2020

Disciplines

Economics

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of trade liberalization on the gender wage gap in South Korea's labor market. Traditional trade theories based on comparative advantage, such as the Heckscher-Ohlin (HO) and the Stolper-Samuelson (SS) model, state that international trade will widen the income gap between skilled-labor and unskilled-labor in developed countries while this wage gap will drop in developing countries. Traditionally, female workers constitute a major portion of the low-skilled labor force in emerging economies. Consequently, trade theory predicts that increasing exposure to trade will reduce the gender wage disparity in developing countries. However, empirical results did not find a significant effect of output growth, caused by export growth, on gender wage inequality. Output growth does not lead to increase relative demand for female workers nor reduce the gender wage gap in South Korea.

First Advisor

Sebastian Wai

Research Area

Economics

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