Essays in Bhagwati and Koster's book, Trade and Wages: Levelling Wages Down, suggest that international trade has played very little role in pushing down wages of less-skilled US workers. Reason being is that they believe rising inequality in the US and many other industrialized economies comes from technological change rather than from foreign competition on unskilled workers' wage.

The essay indicates that in 1963, the weekly wage received by a male in the 90th percentile of the earnings distribution was about 2.91 times the wage of a male at the 10th percentile of the distribution. In 1989 this ratio was at 4.42. Koster stated that growth in weekly earnings are brought about from:
(1) rising wage premiums for workers with more advanced schooling,
(2) faster growth in earnings as workers age, and
(3) increased inequality among workers who have similar levels of skills.

The main factors that pushed up the male earnings inequality in the 1970s were factors (2) and (3). All three factors led to a increase in the male earnings inequality as well as pushing up female inequality, in the 1980s.

Koster argues that there are other reasons for the trend in wage inequality such as labour supply especially during the 1970s. Other reasons being the changes in the structure of industrial demand, changes due to trade unions and minimum wage, changes due to industrial deregulation, innovations in technology, and developments in international trade. However, the statistical evidence for the technology factor is very limited. Koster indicates that over half of the increase in male inequality is due to the growth in unexplained variance of earnings between 1963 and 1989. Where just a third is explained by the growing gap between groups, for example those workers with a high school education and those with a college degree.

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