Market Access and Manufacturing Wages: Evidence for the Enlarged EU

This paper shows that the establishment of market access to the new EU member countries can favour manufacturing wages in larger EU members, but not in smaller ones, although within the latter some sectors may have gains. Hence the impact of market access is country and sector-specific. The variation in country size, as measured by GDP, is highly correlated with the variation in the impact of market access to the new EU member countries on manufacturing wages.