Price-Channel Effects of North-South Trade on the Direction of Technological Knowledge and Wage Inequality

This paper develops a general equilibrium endogenous growth model that emphasizes the mechanisms, other than market size, through which trade-induced North-South technological knowledge diffusion influences the direction of technological progress and, thus, the path of intra and inter-country wage inequality. In contrast with the market-size effect, more common in previous literature on skill-biased technological change, the operation of the price channel, central to this paper, predicts an increasing high-skilled technological bias following openness, which is more in line with the recent trends observed in developed and developing countries.