This study analyzes the impacts of further tariff reductions resulting from the proliferation of regional trade agreements on wage inequality between skilled and unskilled workers in Chile in the 2000s. I match panel data on industry-level effective tariff rates and other industry variables calculated from plant-level microdata to pooled individual cross-section data from national household surveys at the industry level. Based on this unique data set, I estimate the impacts of effective tariffs on workers’ wages directly in one stage. I find that a reduction in effective tariffs on final goods leads to an increase in industry wage and skill premiums. Moreover, the impact on the industry skill premiums is larger for skilled workers employed in large-sized firms. Therefore, the findings indicate that increased import competition due to reductions in output tariffs leads to skill upgrading within industries, thereby increasing demand for skilled workers. The results are robust to the possible endogeneity of effective tariffs and the inclusion of industry-level productivity.

这项研究分析了2000年代智利因区域贸易协定激增而进一步降低关税对智利熟练工人与非熟练工人之间工资不平等的影响。我将有关行业水平有效关税税率的面板数据和其他根据工厂水平微数据计算出的行业变量，与来自行业水平国家住户调查的汇总单个横截面数据进行匹配。基于这一独特的数据集，我可以在一个阶段直接估算有效关税对工人工资的影响。我发现降低最终产品的有效关税会导致行业工资和技能溢价的增加。此外，对于大型公司中雇用的熟练工人而言，对行业技能溢价的影响更大。所以，调查结果表明，由于降低输出关税而导致的进口竞争加剧，导致行业内的技能升级，从而增加了对熟练工人的需求。结果对于有效关税可能产生的内生性和包含行业水平的生产率是有力的。