Exports and Wages: Discriminating between the Sources of Rents

Lionel Fontagné (1, 2, 3) , Daniel Mirza (4)

1 CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne
2 PSE - Paris School of Economics
3 CEPII - Centre d'Etudes Prospectives et d'Informations Internationales
4 CREM - Centre de recherche en économie et management

When do exports lead to rents? And when are they shared with employees? This paper proposes a double empirical test that deals with this question, based on a mix of rent sharing theories and Cournot Oligopoly. We find that most of the OECD exporting activities are associated with some rents that are shared with employees. However, we also show that the destination of sales matter, as rents seem to originate mostly from exporting to other OECD economies or, to a lesser extent, selling to own markets. Exports to developing countries' however, seem to be associated with positive rents only in a small minority of industries.

Mots clés: wages; rents; international trade

Domaines: Economies et finances

Lionel Fontagné, Daniel Mirza. Exports and Wages: Discriminating between the Sources of Rents. Recherches Economiques de Louvain - Louvain economic review, 2009, 75 (1), pp.35-61. ⟨hal-00307922⟩