Regional Divergence and Import Competition

For the last decades, regions in the United States have been diverging. More skill-intensive regions have experienced a higher wage and skill premium growth and had become even more skill-intensive. In this paper, I show that this may be driven in part by trade with China. One of the main findings of this paper is that the consequences on local labor markets of higher import competition are highly heterogeneous. In particular, I focus on how consequences of imports from Chinese manufacturers are different depending on the share of college-educated workforce in the regions. Conditional to be exposed to the same level of import competition, effects in terms of wages and growth of college-educated population growth are especially negative for less educated regions.

However, this finding does not mean just an attenuation of negative effects for more educated areas. Instead, I find that import competition has net positive effects among more college-educated regions. Indeed, among more skill-intensive regions, a greater exposure to import competition attracts college-educated workers and increases college-wages and skill premium; whereas it has the opposite effect among less skill-intensive regions.