International Trade and Labor Market Discrimination

We embed a competitive search model with labor market discrimination into a two-sector two-country framework in order to analyze the relationship between international trade and labor market discrimination. Discrimination reduces the matching probability, and output, in the skilled-labor differentiated-product sector so that the country with more discriminatory firms has a comparative advantage in the simple sector. As countries alter their production mix in accordance with their comparative advantage, trade liberalization can then reinforce the negative effect of discrimination on development in the more discriminatory country and reduce its effect in the country with fewer discriminatory firms. Similarly, the relative profit difference between non-discriminatory and discriminatory firms will increase in the less discriminatory country and shrink in the more discriminatory one. In this way trade can further reduce discrimination in a country where it is less prevalent and increase it where it is more prevalent

The Impact of Gender Inequality on Economic Performance in Developing Countries

Despite substantial progress, gender gaps persist in many developing countries. Since the 1990s, a literature has emerged arguing that these gaps are not only inequitable, but also reduce economic performance. This review finds that, first, it is methodologically difficult to determine reliable effects of gender gaps on economic performance. Second, accounting studies that calculate how much larger GDP would be if gender gaps in employment disappeared, vastly overestimate likely effects. Third, the theoretical literature has generated important insights on mechanisms linking gender gaps to economic performance. Fourth, systematic reviews of the cross-country evidence robustly show that lowering gender gaps in education leads to higher economic performance, while the literature on the impact of other gaps is much more limited. Fifth, there is accumulating micro evidence on how reducing particular gender gaps at the level of households, farms, or firms can improve economic performance in particular contexts, with robust results in some areas, and less clear evidence in others