The impact of offshoring on temporary workers: evidence on wages from South Korea

Trade literature has found that the impact of globalization on the domestic labor market depends, among other factors, on the sourcing country’s income level, the education level of domestic workers, and the occupations involved. This paper investigates another factor that might determine the effects of globalization on the domestic labor market: the worker’s contract type (i.e. permanent vs. temporary contract). We pay particular attention to wages and examine whether the contract type influences the impact of offshoring. Individual-level wage data from the Korean Labor & Income Panel Study during 1999–2007, linked to industry-level offshoring data from the World Input–Output Database are used to answer this question. Even after controlling for individual worker and employer characteristics, industry, and occupation, we find that South Korean manufacturing workers’ wages increase as offshoring increases, but this impact is significantly weaker for temporary workers. Thus, our findings support public concern that globalization exacerbates inequality and shows that one potential channel of growing inequality is the contract type

Integration in global value chains and employment

The chapter selectively reviews the theoretical and empirical literatures on the potential sources of countries’ asymmetries in their integration in global value chains (GVCs), with the aim of identifying the effects of such processes on the dynamics and composition of employment. We consider asymmetries related to the positioning of countries in: (i) the new international division of labor; (ii) the global technology landscape; and (iii) their initial production and employment structure. We conclude by proposing avenues of research to account for the complex factors that affect how countries position within GVCs and what are the opportunities for technological, functional, and employment upgrading

Mortality after surgery in Europe: a 7 day cohort study

Background: Clinical outcomes after major surgery are poorly described at the national level. Evidence of heterogeneity between hospitals and health-care systems suggests potential to improve care for patients but this potential remains unconfirmed. The European Surgical Outcomes Study was an international study designed to assess outcomes after non-cardiac surgery in Europe.Methods: We did this 7 day cohort study between April 4 and April 11, 2011. We collected data describing consecutive patients aged 16 years and older undergoing inpatient non-cardiac surgery in 498 hospitals across 28 European nations. Patients were followed up for a maximum of 60 days. The primary endpoint was in-hospital mortality. Secondary outcome measures were duration of hospital stay and admission to critical care. We used χ² and Fisher’s exact tests to compare categorical variables and the t test or the Mann-Whitney U test to compare continuous variables. Significance was set at p<0·05. We constructed multilevel logistic regression models to adjust for the differences in mortality rates between countries.Findings: We included 46 539 patients, of whom 1855 (4%) died before hospital discharge. 3599 (8%) patients were admitted to critical care after surgery with a median length of stay of 1·2 days (IQR 0·9–3·6). 1358 (73%) patients who died were not admitted to critical care at any stage after surgery. Crude mortality rates varied widely between countries (from 1·2% [95% CI 0·0–3·0] for Iceland to 21·5% [16·9–26·2] for Latvia). After adjustment for confounding variables, important differences remained between countries when compared with the UK, the country with the largest dataset (OR range from 0·44 [95% CI 0·19 1·05; p=0·06] for Finland to 6·92 [2·37–20·27; p=0·0004] for Poland).Interpretation: The mortality rate for patients undergoing inpatient non-cardiac surgery was higher than anticipated. Variations in mortality between countries suggest the need for national and international strategies to improve care for this group of patients.Funding: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine, European Society of Anaesthesiology