Economics Seminar - Globalization, Gender Wage Gap, and Female Labor Force Participation

We study how international trade affects gender employment and wage gap. We develop a quantitative trade model that, with domestic productivity progress and trade-induced labor demand shocks, leads to the expansion of the services sector. As females have more presence in the services sector than males, the rise in the services sector leads to a rise in female labor participation and a decrease in gender wage gap. The quantitative exercise shows that the trade-induced effects are as important as domestic productivity progress in explaining the gender employment and wage gap change in the past decades.