Occupational choice and international trade: Analysis of compensation policy and human capital investments.

详细信息   

• 作者：Ichida ; Toshihiro.
• 学历：Doctor
• 年：2004
• 导师：Findlay, Ronald
• 毕业院校：Columbia University
• 专业：Economics, General.;Economics, Theory.
• CBH：3128969
• Country：USA
• 语种：English
• FileSize：4706187
• Pages：137

文摘

In this thesis, I will introduce a general equilibrium model of occupational choice. The model is used to analyze two distinctive problems. One is about compensation for losers from trade liberalization. The other is to analyze individual's incentives in human capital investment.;There are winners and losers from international trade. Nonetheless, many have become discontented with the current situation surrounding the explicit compensation schemes for losers. Why do we observe both a lack of compensation and the existence of overcompensation for some groups of individuals? When agents differ in their relative and absolute talents to undertake different occupations, shifts in the terms of trade will worsen the best outcome available to some agents and improve the best outcome available to others. Trade liberalization benefits some job-switchers as well as job-stayers, and harms some job-stayers as well as job-switchers. As a result, when the government cannot observe the agents' unused traits, it is impossible to design a program that ensures Pareto improvement from trade liberalization without making overcompensation to certain parts of the population. This proposition, derived rigorously in a two-good general equilibrium model with occupational choice, casts doubt on the effectiveness of existing forms of trade adjustment assistance programs. Under the conditions studied, the government faces a tradeoff between Pareto improvement and overcompensating a group of job-switching individuals.;I provide a dynamic extension of the model of occupational choice. Given that the individual agents face uncertainty in terms of trade, what are the optimal strategy for individual agents in human capital investments? When individuals are heterogeneous in their innate capabilities in multi-dimensions, do they invest in what they were good at when they were born? Do they invest in general human capital? Or do they invest in what they were not good at originally? I find the conditions about when agents will invest in general skills and when they specialize their skills. Depending on parameter values, it is quite possible for all individuals to invest in their innately strong skills even if there is no insurance market.