This column revisits the heated debate over international trade, offshoring, and US wages using new data. It says that increased international exchange with low-income countries has depressed US wages. That effect only arose during the 1990s, suggesting a different conclusion about trade, offshoring, and income inequality than the previous round of debate.
article | admin | August 5, 2010 | 
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What jobs are headed overseas? This column emphasises that the feasibility of offshoring tasks is heavily influenced by the costs of transferring technology and managing complex tasks. Offshoring may be less about lower factor costs and more about the race between technology transfers and trade costs.
article | admin | July 17, 2010 | Comments (0)
According to Alan Blinder, constant improvements in global communications will bring much more offshoring of “impersonal services’’, with an estimated 30 million to 40 million US jobs potentially offshorable. This column warns against taking these numbers at face value and recalls that the US is actually a net insourcer. With the advance of communication technologies, the US should see lots more service jobs “offshored” and lots more “onshored”.
article | admin | July 4, 2010 | Comments (0)
Fear of offshoring may force its way back onto policy agendas soon. This column uses a survey of individual workers to measure the offshorability of particular jobs and says that about 25% of US jobs are offshorable. Surprisingly, routine tasks are not more offshorable but those held by more educated workers are.
article | admin | June 22, 2010 | Comments (0)
There is significant public concern that globalisation heralds the deindustrialisation of rich economies. This column explains why offshoring and immigration are signs of economic vitality and manufacturing strength, not weakness. The key is to address distributional concerns so that all benefit from globalisation.
article | admin | June 7, 2010 | Comments (0)
Global economy, globalisation, immigration, Labour markets, Migration, offshoring, outsourcing
Recent studies have shown that globalisation creates winning and losing firms within the same sector. This column summarises evidence from Italy describing important differences between domestic firms and offshorers. Firms going abroad are larger, but not all modes of offshoring are equal.
article | admin | May 20, 2010 | Comments (0)
domestic, manufacturing, offshoring, total factor productivity
Do offshoring firms reduce their domestic employment? This column examines plant-level evidence from Germany, using difference-in-differences matching techniques. It says that the positive productivity effect of offshoring dominates possible downsizing effects, raising domestic employment at the establishment.
article | admin | May 1, 2010 | Comments (0)
downsizing effects, employment, Germany, offshoring, outsourcing, unemployment
The public debate on offshoring has created more heat than light to date, but researchers are beginning to get a picture of its real economic impact. New evidence from Italy, based on firm-level data and a direct measure of offshoring, shows that offshoring of parts and components boosts domestic productivity while offshoring of services does not.
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article | admin | April 27, 2010 | Comments (0)
How do offshoring firms reshape their domestic workforce? This column, using evidence from German multinationals, shows a positive correlation between offshoring and the firm’s proportion of highly educated workers. Offshoring firms have relatively more domestic jobs involving non-routine and interactive tasks. But offshoring is far from the only explanation for the shift towards more educated employees carrying out more advanced tasks.
article | admin | April 10, 2010 | Comments (0)
Germany, International trade, Labour markets, offshoring, unemployment
International outsourcing is a growing phenomenon in world trade, and its 30% approximate increase between 1970 and 1990 has sparked a lot of interest in recent academic literature and the business press. CEPR DP6484 adds to previous studies on outsourcing’s implications for labour markets by investigating its effect, measured in terms of imports of intermediates, on wages for different skill groups.
article | admin | April 3, 2010 | Comments (0)
