Off the Waterfront: The long-run impact of technological change on dock workers

We investigate how individual workers and local labour markets adjust over a long time period to a discrete and plausibly exogenous technological shock, namely the introduction of containerisation in the UK port industry. This technology, which was introduced rapidly between the mid-1960s and the late-1970s, had dramatic consequences for specific occupations within the port industry. Using longitudinal micro-census data we follow dock-workers over a 40 year period and examine the long-run consequences of containerisation for patterns of employment, migration and mortality. The results show that the job guarantees protected dock-workers’ employment until their removal in 1989. A matched comparison of workers in com- parable unskilled occupations reveals that, even after job guarantees were removed, dock-workers did not fare worse than the comparison group in terms of their labour market outcomes. Our results suggest that job guarantees may significantly reduce the cost to workers of sudden technological change, albeit at a significant cost to the industry

Dockworkers and the introduction of containers in UK shipping in the late 1960’s

Port employment took a hit, but individual workers did no worse than unskilled men in general, write Zouheir El-Sahli and Richard Upwar

The Partial and General Equilibrium Effects of the Greater Arab Free Trade Agreement

Regional trade agreements among developing countries are understudied in the literature. The Greater-Arab Free Trade Agreement (GAFTA) is one such agreement among the Arab countries. The few existing studies on GAFTA suffer from many shortcomings that we address in this study. We incorporate the latest advances in the literature to investigate the partial and general equilibrium effects of GAFTA. The partial equilibrium estimates suggest that GAFTA had a positive and significant effect on bilateral trade of around 40% in 1998 and 61% seven years later after the phasing out of tariffs. The general equilibrium analysis suggests that the welfare effects of the agreement are very small and mostly negligible in the member states. The results highlight that deeper integration among the Arab countries is imperative to bring about further welfare benefits to the member states. This result can be generalized to recommend deeper regional trade agreements among developing countries to capitalize on the benefits of free trade

Estimating the effects of containerisation on world trade

This thesis examines the effects that containerisation had on the growth in world trade between the years 1962 and 1990. Containerisation is a technological change that arises from shipping goods via containers rather than through the traditional break-bulk method which characterised international shipping since antiquity. This thesis makes many contributions to the literature. This is the first quantitative and econometric study into the effects of containerisation in economics. We collect data from a specialist business publication and construct container variables which are used for the first time in economics. We also use a scientific classification from 1968 to classify products as containerisable or non-containerisable. Another contribution is that the econometric models employed in this thesis allow for a "horse race" between the technology variable and the policy variables: free trade agreements, General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade membership and currency unions. We make use of the cross-sectional and time series variation available to us in the adoption of the technology across 157 countries to identify the effects of containerisation on world trade. We employ several specifications and try different trade flow dimensions to pin down the right way to model containerisation. In doing so, we deal with several econometric problems that arise in similar econometric studies such as omitted variable bias and endogeneity bias. The effects of containerisation are felt 10 to 15 years after bilateral adoption of the technology. We estimate that containerisation led to an increase of 380% in North-North containerisable trade 10 to 15 years later. We find no evidence for endogeneity in this specification and we can be confident to make a causal statement. We also find evidence that containerisation affected North-South trade the most, followed by North-North and then South-South containerisable trade although we cannot be as confident about making causal statements in the case of North-South and South-South trade. The evidence is however suggestive of strong effects on containerisable trade in the two subsamples. In all cases, the effects of containerisable are found to be multiple times the size of the effects of the individual policy variables - 2 to 10 times as large depending on the subsample and the variable in question

Estimating the effects of containerisation on world trade

This thesis examines the effects that containerisation had on the growth in world trade between the years 1962 and 1990. Containerisation is a technological change that arises from shipping goods via containers rather than through the traditional break-bulk method which characterised international shipping since antiquity. This thesis makes many contributions to the literature. This is the first quantitative and econometric study into the effects of containerisation in economics. We collect data from a specialist business publication and construct container variables which are used for the first time in economics. We also use a scientific classification from 1968 to classify products as containerisable or non-containerisable. Another contribution is that the econometric models employed in this thesis allow for a "horse race" between the technology variable and the policy variables: free trade agreements, General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade membership and currency unions. We make use of the cross-sectional and time series variation available to us in the adoption of the technology across 157 countries to identify the effects of containerisation on world trade. We employ several specifications and try different trade flow dimensions to pin down the right way to model containerisation. In doing so, we deal with several econometric problems that arise in similar econometric studies such as omitted variable bias and endogeneity bias. The effects of containerisation are felt 10 to 15 years after bilateral adoption of the technology. We estimate that containerisation led to an increase of 380% in North-North containerisable trade 10 to 15 years later. We find no evidence for endogeneity in this specification and we can be confident to make a causal statement. We also find evidence that containerisation affected North-South trade the most, followed by North-North and then South-South containerisable trade although we cannot be as confident about making causal statements in the case of North-South and South-South trade. The evidence is however suggestive of strong effects on containerisable trade in the two subsamples. In all cases, the effects of containerisable are found to be multiple times the size of the effects of the individual policy variables - 2 to 10 times as large depending on the subsample and the variable in question

Resilience in the time of COVID-19: Lessons learned from Middle East and North Africa small- and medium-sized enterprises

We investigated the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on small- and medium-sized enterprises in Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco. Using firm-level panel data from an enterprise survey, we highlight several new findings. The surveyed firms resorted to wage and work hour reductions more readily than layoffs in the wake of the pandemic. Within these firms, larger firms are more resilient, recover faster, and adapt more often. On the sector level, the accommodation and food services sector is the worst affected by most outcomes. Furthermore, we find that switching to remote work is associated with better outcomes, while participating in government assistance programs is not. On the other hand, firms that participate in international trade are more resilient and adaptable during the pandemic. The results of the study carry policy implications relevant to the resilience of small- and medium-sized enterprises in developing countries in times of extreme crisis.This work has benefited from a financial grant from the Economic Research Forum, Cairo

The Impact of Technological Change on New Trade: Evidence from the Container Revolution

This paper exploits exogenous features of the 1960s/70s container revolution to estimate the impact of the introduction of refrigerated containers (or reefers) on new trade of temperature sensitive products. Our identification strategy is justified by a historical narrative which suggests that the containerization of bilateral trading routes was exogenous to the growth of trade in ‘reefer commodities' and stimulated trade in non-traditional (exotic) non-bulk commodities such as pharmaceuticals, photo film and sensitive instruments. Our study combines previously collected data on variations in the container usage on bilateral trade routes with newly collected data on temperature sensitivity and applies them to 5-digit product level trade flows. Our benchmark estimates suggest that the introduction of reefer containers caused an increase in the likelihood of new trade in temperature sensitive products of 9% during 1968 and 1973 and 13% between 1968 and 1978

Estimating the effects of the container revolution on world trade

Many historical accounts have asserted that containerization triggered complementary technological and organizational changes that revolutionized global freight transport. We are the first to suggest an identification strategy for estimating the effects of the container revolution on world trade. Our empirical strategy exploits time and cross-sectional variation in countries’ first adoption of container facilities and combines it with product-level variation in containerizability and container usage. Applying our container variables on a large panel of product level trade flows for the period 1962-1990, our estimates suggest economically large concurrent and cumulative effects of containerization and lend support for the view of containerization being a driver of 20th century economic globalization

Estimating the effects of containerisation on world trade

This thesis examines the effects that containerisation had on the growth in world trade between the years 1962 and 1990. Containerisation is a technological change that arises from shipping goods via containers rather than through the traditional break-bulk method which characterised international shipping since antiquity. This thesis makes many contributions to the literature. This is the first quantitative and econometric study into the effects of containerisation in economics. We collect data from a specialist business publication and construct container variables which are used for the first time in economics. We also use a scientific classification from 1968 to classify products as containerisable or non-containerisable. Another contribution is that the econometric models employed in this thesis allow for a "horse race" between the technology variable and the policy variables: free trade agreements, General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade membership and currency unions. We make use of the cross-sectional and time series variation available to us in the adoption of the technology across 157 countries to identify the effects of containerisation on world trade. We employ several specifications and try different trade flow dimensions to pin down the right way to model containerisation. In doing so, we deal with several econometric problems that arise in similar econometric studies such as omitted variable bias and endogeneity bias. The effects of containerisation are felt 10 to 15 years after bilateral adoption of the technology. We estimate that containerisation led to an increase of 380% in North-North containerisable trade 10 to 15 years later. We find no evidence for endogeneity in this specification and we can be confident to make a causal statement. We also find evidence that containerisation affected North-South trade the most, followed by North-North and then South-South containerisable trade although we cannot be as confident about making causal statements in the case of North-South and South-South trade. The evidence is however suggestive of strong effects on containerisable trade in the two subsamples. In all cases, the effects of containerisable are found to be multiple times the size of the effects of the individual policy variables - 2 to 10 times as large depending on the subsample and the variable in question.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo