A flood of imports from China had an unexpected impact on the Peruvian clothing industry while discouraging Peru’s women workers. Pamela Medina Quispe (University of Toronto) joins to explain. In Part I (3:18), she describes the puzzling result that China both overwhelmed Peru’s local apparel companies and caused them to shift into higher quality production for export to richer markets like the United States. In Part II (20:10), she explains how the sudden increase in Chinese imports also impacted Peru’s labor market, including an especially negative effect on less educated women workers, who moved to the informal sector or out of the labor force altogether (39:19).

Read more…

• Quispe, Pamela Medina. Forthcoming. Import Competition, Quality Upgrading and Exporting: Evidence from the Peruvian Apparel Industry. Review of Economics and Statistics.

• Mansour, Hani, Pamela Medina Quispe, and Andrea Velasquez. Forthcoming. Import Competition and Gender Differences in Labor Reallocation. Labour Economics.