Offshoring tasks, yet creating jobs?

The policy debate views offshoring as job destruction. Theoretical models of offshoring mostly assume full employment. We develop a model of task trade that allows for equilibrium unemployment. In this model, there are two margins of adjustment. At the extensive margin, moving tasks offshore destroys jobs. At the intensive margin, due to higher productivity of labor in domestic tasks it creates jobs. Exploring these conditions in detail, we identify the potential of non-monotonic adjustment: Early stages of offshoring always lead to higher unemployment, while later stages may entail net job creation. We highlight this potential through numerical simulations. --Offshoring,Trade in Tasks,Unemployment,Non-monotonicity

Two-way migration between similar countries

We develop a model to explain two-way migration of high-skilled individuals between countries that are similar in their economic characteristics. High-skilled migration is explained by a combination of two features: In both countries there is a continuum of workers with differing abilities, which are private knowledge, and the production technology gives incentives to firms for hiring workers of similar ability. In the presence on migration cost, high-skilled workers self-select into the group of migrants, thereby ensuring they are hired together with other high-skilled migrants. The laissez-faire equilibrium features too much migration, explained by a negative migration externality, and as a result all individuals are worse of than in autarky. We also show that for suffciently low levels of migration cost the optimal level of migration is strictly positive. In extensions to our basic model, we consider the presence of an internationally immobile factor and find that in this case the possibility of aggregate gains from migration in the laissez-faire equilibrium emerges. We also show that our basic results are robust with respect to small differences in countries' technologies. --Migration,Skilled Workers,Positive Assortative Matching,Externalities

Two-Way Migration between Similiar Countries

We develop a model to explain two-way migration of high-skilled individuals between countries that are similar in their economic characteristics. High-skilled migration results from the combination of workers whose abilities are private knowledge, and a production technology that gives incentives to firms for hiring workers of similar ability. In the presence of migration cost, high-skilled workers self-select into the group of migrants. The laissez-faire equilibrium features too much migration, explained by a negative migration externality. We also show that for sufficiently low levels of migration cost the optimal level of migration, while smaller than in the laissez-faire equilibrium, is strictly positive. Finally, we extend our model into different directions to capture stylized facts in the data and show that our baseline results also hold in these more complex modelling environments

Industrialisation and the Big Push in a Global Economy

In their famous paper on the "Big Push", Murphy, Shleifer, and Vishny (1989) show how the combination of increasing returns to scale at the firm level and pecuniary externalities can give rise to a poverty trap, thereby formalising an old idea due to Rosenstein-Rodan (1943). We develop in this paper an oligopoly model of the Big Push that is very close in spirit to the Murphy-Shleifer-Vishny (MSV) model, but in contrast to the MSV model it is easily extended to the case of an economy that is open to international trade. Having a workable open-economy framework allows us to address the question whether globalisation makes it easier or harder for a country to escape from a poverty trap. Our model gives a definite answer to this question: Globalisation makes it harder to escape from a poverty trap since the adoption of the modern technology at the firm level is impeded by tougher competition in the open economy

Essays on Offshoring and High-skilled Migration

Das Schlagwort der Globalisierung, welches in der Regel mit der Vertiefung internationaler Handelsbeziehungen in Verbindung gebracht wird, hat viele Facetten und umfasst sowohl die internationale Integration von Güter- als auch von Faktormärkten. Meine Dissertation trägt diesem Umstand Rechnung und betrachtet zwei aktuelle Phänomene, welche erheblich zur internationalen Verflechtung nationaler Arbeitsmärkte beitragen. „Offshoring“ bezeichnet dabei die internationale Verlagerung von Produktionsschritten in Länder mit niedrigen Produktionskosten, welche hinsichtlich der Wohlfahrts-, Verteilungs- und Reallokationseffekte im Auslagerungsland analysiert wird. Getrennt davon werden zudem Migrationsmuster sowie Migrationsanreize von hochqualifizierten Arbeitskräften, welche vornehmlich zwischen ähnlich entwickelten Volkswirtschaften wandern analysiert

Offshoring and Job Polarisation between Firms

We set up a general equilibrium model, in which offshoring to a low-wage country can lead to job polarisation in the high-wage country. Job polarisation is the result of a reallocation of labour across firms that differ in productivity and pay wages that are positively linked to their profits by a rent-sharing mechanism. Offshoring involves fixed and task-specific variable costs, and as a consequence it is chosen only by the most productive firms, and only for those tasks with the lowest variable offshoring costs. A reduction in those variable costs increases offshoring at the intensive and at the extensive margin, with domestic employment shifted from the newly offshoring firms in the middle of the productivity distribution to firms at the tails of this distribution, paying either very low or very high wages. We also study how the reallocation of labour across firms affects economy-wide unemployment. Offshoring reduces unemployment when it is confined to high-productivity firms, while this outcome is not guaranteed when offshoring is also chosen by low-productivity firms

Trade, Tasks, and Training: The Effect of Offshoring on Individual Skill Upgrading

We offer a theoretical explanation and empirical evidence for a positive link between increased offshoring and individual skill upgrading. Skill upgrading takes the form of on-the-job training, complementing the existing literature, which mainly focuses on the retraining of workers after a direct job displacement through offshoring. To establish a link between offshoring and on-the-job training, we introduce an individual skill upgrading margin into the small-open-economy version of the Grossman and Rossi-Hansberg (2008) model of offshoring. In our model offshoring, by scaling up workers’ wages, creates previously unexploited skill upgrading possibilities and, thus, leads to more on-the-job training. Using data from German manufacturing, we find strong empirical support for the prediction that increased offshoring is positively related to individual on-the-job training participation

Offshoring Domestic Jobs

We set up a two-country general equilibrium model, in which heterogeneous firms from one country (the source country) can offshore routine tasks to a low-wage host country. The most productive firms self-select into offshoring, and the impact on welfare in the source country can be positive or negative, depending on the share of firms engaged in offshoring. Each firm is run by an entrepreneur, and inequality between entrepreneurs and workers as well as intra-group inequality among entrepreneurs is higher with offshoring than in autarky. All results hold in a model extension with firm-level rent sharing, which results in aggregate unemployment. In this extended model, offshoring furthermore has non-monotonic effects on unemployment and intra-group inequality among workers. The paper also offers a calibration exercise to quantify the effects of offshoring