To make high-quality research more accessible and easier to explore.

Fields:
3 results ✕ Clear filters

The Home-Market Effect and Bilateral Trade Patterns

American Economic Review 2004 94(4), 1108-1129 open access
We test for home-market effects using a difference-in-difference gravity specification. The home-market effect is the tendency for large countries to be net exporters of goods with high transport costs and strong scale economies. It is predicted by models of trade based on increasing returns to scale but not by models of trade based on comparative advantage. In our estimation approach, we select pairs of exporting countries that belong to a common preferential trade area and examine their exports of goods with high transport costs and strong scale economies relative to their exports of goods with low transport costs and weak scale economies. We find that home-market effects exist and that the nature of these effects depends on industry transport costs. For industries with very high transport costs, it is national market size that determines national exports. For industries with moderately high transport costs, it is neighborhood market size that matters. In this case, national market size plus market size in nearby countries determine national exports.

The Wage Effects of Offshoring: Evidence from Danish Matched Worker-Firm Data

American Economic Review 2014 104(6), 1597-1629
We employ data that match the population of Danish workers to the universe of private-sector Danish firms, with product-level trade flows by origin- and destination-countries. We document new stylized facts about offshoring and instrument for offshoring and exporting. Within job spells, offshoring increases (decreases) the high-skilled ( low-skilled) wage; exporting increases the wages of all skill-types; the net wage-effect of trade varies substantially within the same skill-type; conditional on skill, the wage-effect of offshoring varies across task characteristics. We estimate the overall effects of offshoring on workers' present and future income streams by constructing pre- offshoring-shock worker-cohorts and tracking them over time.

Offshoring, Transition, and Training: Evidence from Danish Matched Worker-Firm Data

American Economic Review 2012 102(3), 424-428
We combine matched Danish worker-firm-trade data with detailed individual-worker training data. We find: 1) workers displaced from offshoring firms take up more vocational-training and have a harder time getting re-attached to the labor-force than other displaced workers, and they also exhibit higher vocational-training take-up rates 2 years before layoffs; 2) the staying workers with offshoring firms take up more vocational-training than those with non-offshoring firms; and 3) the post-secondary-training take-up rates for displaced workers are no different than for the general population.