Trade competition and migration: Evidence from the quartz crisis

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Twinam, Tate
• 署名单位: William & Mary
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-1996
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2022.103653
• 发表日期: 2022
• 关键词: Tradecompetition; Technologicalchange; migration

摘要

Foreign competition and technological change can both present threats to domestic industries, potentially resulting in out-migration from cities and regions where these industries are spatially agglomerated. In this paper, I study the migration effects of one such trade shock: The quartz crisis, which devastated the globally dominant Swiss watch industry in the 1970s. Using a differences-in-differences strategy, I show that this trade shock led to a rapid loss of population in affected areas, and a long-run change in growth patterns. This contrasts with many other studies of large trade shocks, which find little migration response. I highlight three key factors that distinguish this shock from others and may explain the divergence: (1) the crisis negatively impacted a key export industry while generating no offsetting gains, (2) the affected labor markets were highly non-diversified, and (3) the affected workers were highly mobile.(c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).