Foreign workers, product quality, and trade: Evidence from a natural experiment

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Ariu, Andrea
• 署名单位: University of Milan; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; Leibniz Association; Ifo Institut; University of Milan
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-1996
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2022.103686
• 发表日期: 2022
• 关键词: information frictions; labor mobility; QUALITY; GVCs; TRADE

摘要

This paper shows that international labor mobility leads to higher-quality products, more trade, and more effective global value chains. Exploiting variation in the time and intensity at which Swiss localities (identified by their postal codes) were treated by the increasing availability of foreign workers caused by the implementation of the Swiss-EU Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons, I find that the inflow of high-skilled European workers led to an up-grade in the quality of inputs imported from their origin countries. Better intermediates show to be associated with a higher quality of output, making Swiss products more appealing for international markets and boosting exports. Therefore, the efficacy of Swiss global value chains improved both upstream-thanks to higher-quality intermediate inputs brought by the intensification of the existing buyer-seller relations-and downstream-because higher-quality products eased increasing exports to existing buyers and helped finding new customers, especially in distant destinations.(c) 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.