Author(s): Riadh Trabelsi, Nabawia Gargouri
This paper dealt with the role of trade openness in the changes occurring in the Tunisian labor market over the period from 1983 to 2012. Tunisia's foreign trade orientations opted for a gradual opening up, causing a redistribution of resources within the industry and a reallocation of employment and real wages. Empirically, an error correction model (time series) was adopted in order to estimate the long- and short-run effects of international trade on labor demand and real wage levels in each manufacturing industry. The obtained results differentiated between the short and long-runs and the studied industries due to the divergence of the companies’ reaction. This difference of the Tunisian manufacturing industries might be the result of a dissimilarity of their nature (exportable or importable), size, degree of integration into the international economy, productivity level of their skilled and unskilled workers, and so on. Such differences reflect the complexity of the problems that the Tunisian authorities may face in the implementation of sectoral policies aimed at creating jobs and/or raising the workers’ wages.