O tem se že dolgo spravljam nekaj napisati. V zadnjih letih je bilo narejeno precej študij, ki v drugačno luč postavljajo trditev klasične, neoklasične in nove teorije zunanje trgovine, da so koristi od zunanje trgovine za vse države pozitivni. Ta trditev sicer še vedno drži, na agregatni ravni so koristi za vsako državo pozitivne, problem je le v porazdelitvi teh koristi med gospodarskimi panogami ter med nosilci “produkcijskih faktorjev“. Zadnji dve desetletji eksplozivnega napredovanja globalizacije sta namreč pokazali, da so te koristi v razvitih državah zelo neenakomerno porazdeljene. Običajno močno pridobijo lastniki podjetij (kapital), ki proizvodnjo selijo v cenejše države, izgubljajo pa zaposleni (delo), ki bodisi izgubijo službe ali pa so prisiljeni delati za nižje plače.

Za pokušino spodaj navajam letošnjo študijo avtorjev David H. Autor, David Dorn, Gordon H. Hanson in Jae Song “Trade Adjustment: Worker Level Evidence“, ki so analizirali izkušnje zaposlenih v industriji v ZDA.

In the past two decades, China’s manufacturing exports have grown spectacularly, U.S. imports from China have surged, but U.S. exports to China have increased only modestly. Using representative, longitudinal data on individual earnings by employer, we analyze the effect of exposure to import competition on earnings and employment of U.S. workers over 1992 through 2007. Individuals who in 1991 worked in manufacturing industries that experienced high subsequent import growth garner lower cumulative earnings and are at elevated risk of exiting the labor force and obtaining public disability benefits. They spend less time working for their initial employers, less time in their initial two-digit manufacturing industries, and more time working elsewhere in manufacturing and outside of manufacturing. Earnings losses are larger for individuals with low initial wages, low initial tenure, low attachment to the labor force, and those employed at large firms with low wage levels. Import competition also induces substantial job churning among high-wage workers, but they are better able than low-wage workers to move across employers with minimal earnings losses, and are less likely to leave their initial firm during a mass layoff. These findings, which are robust to a large set of worker, firm and industry controls, and various alternative measures of trade exposure, reveal that there are significant worker-level adjustment costs to import shocks, and that adjustment is highly uneven across workers according to their conditions of employment in the pre-shock period.