Resumen de Wage and Human Capital in Exporting Firms in Morocco

Christophe Muller, Christophe Nordman

• We study the relationship of wages and education and training practices in Morocco in a context of trade and liberalisation reforms in a matched worker-firm data of eight exporting firms in two industrial sectors: Metallurgical-Electrical industries and Textile-Clothing. We find that the specific characteristics of the surveyed firms little affect worker wages. Moreover, the textile sector does not appear to be a significant channel for promoting skills in the economy. The minimal wage legislation is found to exert a positive pressure on wages. Also, some evidence of gender wage gap exists in the data. In these data, the effects of education and experience on wages are quite limited below the third quantile of wages, as well as the role of apprenticeship. In contrast, On-the-Job Training (OJT) much contributes to labour productivity as measured by wage levels. Most of the OJT is concentrated in the Metallurgical-Electrical industries. Education is positively correlated to OJT. Moreover, estimates of explanatory relationships of task organisation (chain gangs, teams, supervision and executive workers) show the powerful sector and educational determinations of job organisation in the firms. Then, our results suggest that the impact of worker education may take indirect routes and not only appear through education coefficients in wage regressions.