Trade and Intergenerational Income Mobility: Theory and Evidence from the U.S

Italo Colantone, Gianmarco I.P. Ottaviano and Kohei Takeda
Additional contact information
Italo Colantone: Bocconi University, Baffi Research Centre, GREEN Research Centre, CESifo and Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei
Gianmarco I.P. Ottaviano: Bocconi University, Baffi Research Centre, CEP, CEPR and IGIER
Kohei Takeda: National University of Singapore and CEP

No 2024.29, Working Papers from Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei

Abstract: This paper studies the impact of globalization on intergenerational income mobility. Exploiting U.S. data, we find that stronger trade exposure at the commuting zone level lowers the intergenerational income mobility of residents. In particular, higher exposure to Chinese import competition lowers the income mobility of the cohort of U.S. workers born in 1980-1982. We present a general equilibrium theory in which path dependence in sector choice of individuals over generations and mobility frictions determine the dynamics of industrial compositions across locations in a country. The theory predicts that rising import competition reduces intergenerational income mobility, consistent with the empirical findings.

Keywords: Import competition; Distributional consequences; Intergenerational income mobility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F1 F14 F16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-12
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://feem-media.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/w ... ads/NDL2024-29-1.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fem:femwpa:2024.29

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Alberto Prina Cerai ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).