while new crosscountry timeseries evidence suggests that technological change has contributed to a rise in earnings inequality the choice of specification matters for the significance and size of the effect and also for where in the earnings distribution the impact is most pronounced see box table and oecd la early empirical studies were based on the stolpersamuelson theorem which predicts that trade increases the real return for the factor with which a country is most abundantly endowed however the theorem proved to be inconsistent with the evidence and in particular the observed rise in inequality in lowincome countries eg goldberg and pavcnik feenstra stone and cavazos