Cuadernos de Economía

ISSN : 0210-0266
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La Huella de Desigualdad del Comercio de bienes finales: El caso de la economía mexicana, 1995-2011

  • Jorge Villaseñor,y Rosario Cervantes ,

Abstract

The relationship between trade and inequality has been widely discussed, however, recently the concept of “inequality footprint” has been coined and used to measure how, trough trade, the final demand of goods from one nation requires a certain amount of inequality in those nations from which it imports its final goods. Then, by using input-output analysis, Lorenz Curves and Gini indices are estimated for the income distribution associated with the Mexican trade of final goods in order to contribute to the debate on the relationship between trade and income distribution by using the concept of “inequality footprint”. The results show that, between 1995 and 2011, the inequality footprint of Mexican final demand is much lower than the inequality footprint of the rest of the world final demand. Nonetheless, Mexican final goods exports have smaller inequality footprints than Mexican final goods imports. Furthermore, it is also found that most of the inequality footprint in Mexican trade can be explained by the fact that, among skill levels, there is a more homogeneous distribution of labour compensations in Mexican final goods exports than in Mexican final goods imports. Labour compensations contained in final goods imports are highly concentrated in medium and high skilled
workers payments.