abstract

Tracking individual workers across sectors and firms after Brazil's trade liberalization in the 1990s shows that tariff cuts and additional imports trigger worker displacements, but that neither comparative-advantage sectors nor exporters absorb trade-displaced workers for years. To the contrary, there are more displacements and fewer accessions in comparative-advantage sectors and at exporters, and trade liberalization increases transitions to informal work and self-employment. Labor productivity at exporters increases faster than production so that output shifts to more productive firms but labor does not.

keywords: International trade; factor reallocation; labor demand and turnover; linked employer-employee data; Brazil

jel: F14, F16, J23, J63

background

• formal employment census RAIS (in portuguese)
• supporting files
  • additional tables and graphs [pdf 932k]
  • sas 9.1 code for random worker draws [zip 9k]
  • stata 8.2 code for statistics and estimation [zip 185k]
  • occupational concordances [pdf 232k]
  • matched firm data base (PIA) [summary] [pdf 490k]
  • data and resources for research on brazil
• employer-level estimates: "trade and workforce changeover in Brazil" [pdf 311k]