Estimating the Wage Costs of Inter- and Intra-Sectoral Adjustment. — The proposition that labour market adjustments to intra-industry
trade are less costly than adjustments to inter-industry trade is a widely-held belief amongst trade economists. If there
are significant sector-specific skills, then this ‘smooth adjustment hypothesis’ seems intuitive. Direct evidence relating
to this issue remains largely anecdotal. In this paper we estimate the returns to tenure within jobs, industries and occupations
in order to predict the costs, in terms of wage losses, of moving jobs between and within sectors. We find no compelling evidence
that wage costs of moving between industries are larger than the costs of moving within industries.
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