GSIELM (Graduate Students International Economics and Labor Market) Lunch Seminar

Du 02/10/2017 de 13:00 à 14:00

Salle S/3, MSE, 106 boulevard de l'Hôpital, 75013 Paris

LAENGLE Katharina (Université Paris 1 - PSE)

Global value chains and labor market adjustments

The question how offshoring affects domestic workers has been subject to empirical studies for decades. Many analyses based their work on traditional trade data as a proxy for offshoring. However, these statistics fall short in depicting intertwinings of supply chains and how foreign production factors enter domestic production. For that reason, this paper quantifies offshoring in terms of value added thus allowing to trace back how much foreign capital and labor enter domestic production. Using data from the WIOD, effects are analyzed for 14 sectors in 16 countries between 1995 and 2008. Regarding low skilled workers, results confirm implications of the model by Grossman & Rossi-Hansberg (2008). Accordingly, offshoring proved to positively influence domestic low skilled workers’ wage shares, when their tasks were moved abroad. Yet, model assumptions and the empirical setup of this paper diverge thus question the mechanisms highlighted by GRH. Importantly, the growing share of foreign capital in production negatively affects low skilled workers' wage share while positively influencing that of high skilled. Consequently, findings suggest that offshoring benefits high skilled workers and harms low skilled.