Título del documento:The impact of trade on employment in Colombian

Resumen: This article analyses the impact of imports and exports, from and towards the most important Colombian trade partners (United States, European Union, China, Andean Community of Nations, Venezuela, Brazil and Mexico), on employment in the manufacturing sector during 2000 ‐ 2007. We use the System GMM methodology to estimate an equation of labor demand as a function of capital, wage, and a measure of imports and exports. Additionally, we estimate the effects of the share of trade with each trade partner over the labor demand, and compute interaction variables to analyze changes in the effects of international trade across the categories of workers (high and low skilled). Econometric estimations produced, for this period, evidence on inertia in the Colombian labor market. In addition, a substitution relationship between capital and labor was also found. Imports showed no or a negative effect over employment depending on the index of imports used. Analyses by destiny and origin of trade showed that exports to Venezuela and Andean Community of Nations had a negative correlation to employment. Likewise, we found that only commerce with China had some impact on each manufacturing subsector employment, depending on the characteristics of the workers (high or low skilled).