0000000000195024
AUTHOR
Hosny Zoabi
When Stolper-Samuelson Does Not Apply: International Trade and Female Labor
Whenever a country specializes on industries that use female labor intensively, its female labor force participation should increase. This intuition, which bases on the Stolper-Samuleson Theorem, may fail in a three-factor, two-good model. We develop a model where capital, male and female work are distinct factors of production. We follow an established assumption and postulate that capital accumulation closes the gender wage gap. In this setup, the Stolper-Samuleson based intuition fails necessarily: the gender wage gap widens in countries that specialize on sectors intensive in female labor, and vice versa.
Retirement Age Across Countries: The Role of Occupations
Cross-country variation in effective retirement age is usually attributed to institutional differences that affect individuals’ incentives to retire. This paper suggests a different approach to explain this variation. Since working individuals in different occupations naturally retire at different ages, the composition of occupations within an economy matters for its average effective retirement age. Using U.S. Census data we infer the average retirement age by occupation, which we then use to predict the retirement age of 38 countries, using the occupational distribution of these countries. Our findings suggest that the differences in occupational composition explain up to 38% of the obser…
Trade Liberalization, Female Labor Force Participation and Economic Growth
This research argues that the interaction between international trade and female labor force participation has played a significant role in the process of development. The main concern of our study is to show how differences in per household capital stocks, via international specialization, affect household choice of female labor force participation and fertility, and how these decisions, in turn, feed back and affect the accumulation of capital. Interestingly, and in contrast to conventional wisdom, our theory suggests that specialization in female's comparative advantage sectors expands these sectors but hinders female labor force participation, while specialization in male's comparative …