Do Exporters Import Gender Inequality? (with Olga Lark) [R&R]

We examine whether exposure to gender inequality at export destinations affects the gender wage gap in exporting firms. We motivate the analysis through a stylized model where wages depend on worker productivity, and where men have a comparative advantage when trading with gender-unequal countries due to customer discrimination. Empirically, we use high-quality matched employer--employee data from Sweden and calculate how exposed firms are to country-level gender inequality through their export destinations. In line with the stylized model, we find that increased exports to gender-unequal destinations lead to a wider within-firm gender wage gap. Although increased export intensity on average leads to a wider gender wage gap, the effect is entirely driven by trade with gender-unequal countries; we find no effect on the gender wage gap when firms increase their exports to countries with gender-equality levels close to that of Sweden. Female managers, who are most likely to interact with foreign customers, experience the most pronounced negative relative wage effects. The results are robust to several specification tests, different measures of gender inequality, and controls for other mechanisms highlighted in the previous literature.

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The R&D and Innovation Effects of Firm-Specific Trade Opportunities

This paper studies how firm-specific access to trade opportunities affects firms' R&D investments and innovative activities. To construct firm-specific measures of trade opportunities that are exogenous to firm-level decisions, I use the variation in firms' export and import patterns and exploit the fact that firms differ in their product-country exporting (sourcing) patterns. Increased export opportunities lead to increased innovative activities in terms of both R&D activities (spending, employees, and intensity) and innovations (product and process). The results for increased import opportunities show no effects on R&D investments, but the evidence suggests that increased import opportunities substitute firms' own product, process, and service innovation.

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Bargaining for Trade: When Exporting Becomes Detrimental to Female Wages [Submitted] (with Daniel Halvarsson, Olga Lark, and Patrik Tingvall)

In this paper, we study the link between globalization of firms and gender inequality. Specifically, we examine how the need for interpersonal contacts in trade and gender-specific differences in negotiations are related to the gender wage gap. Our key finding is that export of goods that are intensive in interpersonal contacts widens the gender wage gap. The effect is robust across various specifications and is most pronounced for domestic exporting firms, which do not trade within multinational corporations but with external foreign partners, where the contracting problem is most distinct. We ascribe this result to a male comparative advantage in bargaining. 

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Published papers

Halvarsson, D., Lark, O., Tingvall, P.G., Vahter, P. and Videnord, J. (2023). Do gender norms travel within corporations? The impact of foreign subsidiaries on the home country's gender wage gap, Applied Economics Letters. Link to paper

Tingvall, PG. and Videnord, J. (2020). Regional differences in effects of publicly sponsored R&D grants on SME performance. Small Business Economics, 54, 951–969. Link to paper

Kokko, A., Tingvall, PG. and Videnord, J. (2015). The Growth Effects of R&D Spending in the EU: A Meta-Analysis. Economics, 9 (1), 20150040. Link to paper