Import competition, employment and wage in US manufacturing: new evidence from multivariate panel cointegration analysis

This paper examines whether employment and wages in the US manufacturing sector exhibit any long-run relationship with import competition. The results based on a multivariate panel cointegration analysis of observations on 12 two-digit SIC manufacturing industries over the period from the third quarter of 1982 to the fourth quarter of 1992 indicate that US manufacturing employment does not bear a long-run relationship with import competition but manufacturing wage does. While the long-run correlation between import price and manufacturing wage is found to be sector sensitive panel estimation reveals a highly significant negative correlation between import price and manufacturing wage.