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This paper is the first to investigate the role of firm-level upstreamness (i.e. the number of steps before the production of a firm meets final demand) in explaining wage differences according to workers' origin. Using unique linked employer-employee data relative to the Belgian manufacturing industry for the period 2002-2010, our estimates show that firms that are further up in the value chain pay significantly higher wages. However, the wage premium associated with upstreamness is also found to vary substantially depending on the origin of the workers. Unconditional quantile estimates suggest that those who benefit the most from being employed in more upstream firms are high-wage workers born in developed countries. In contrast, workers born in developing countries, irrespective of their earnings, appear to be unfairly rewarded. Quantile decompositions further show that, while differences in average values of upstreamness according to workers' origin play a limited role, differences in wage premia associated with upstreamness account for a substantial part of the wage gap between workers born in developed and developing countries, especially at the top of the earnings distribution. These results are shown to be robust to a number of sensitivity tests, including broader or narrower definitions of workers' wages and different firm environments in terms of technological and knowledge intensity.
Durant ces dernières décennies, les processus mondiaux de production de biens et de services sont devenus de plus en plus fragmentés. Cette fragmentation, particulièrement prononcée au sein des petites économies ouvertes telle que la Belgique, a entraîné l’émergence de chaînes de valeur mondiales (CVM). Parallèlement, l’immigration nette dans les pays de l’OCDE est demeurée positive, et ce depuis les années 1960. Par ailleurs, entre 2000 et 2017, le nombre de résidents nés à l’étranger (c’est-à-dire les migrants de première génération) a augmenté de plus de 50% au sein des pays de l’OCDE (OCDE, 2018). Sur base de ces constats, cet article vise à fournir un aperçu de la littérature concernant le lien entre la position (plus ou moins en amont) des firmes dans les chaînes de valeur et l’écart de salaires entre travailleurs natifs et migrants. A cette fin, nous abordons tout d’abord les sources potentielles d’inégalités de salaires basées sur l’origine des travailleurs. Ensuite, nous présentons les principaux résultats relatifs à l’impact de la position de la firme dans les CVM sur le salaire des travailleurs en général, puis plus particulièrement sur les inégalités de salaires entre travailleurs natifs et migrants. Ce faisant, nous consacrons une attention particulière aux résultats empiriques concernant l’économie belge. Classification JEL : J15, J31, F16
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