IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/labeco/v19y2012i5p738-747.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Offshoring and job loss fears: An econometric analysis of individual perceptions

Author

Listed:
  • Geishecker, Ingo
  • Riedl, Maximilian
  • Frijters, Paul

Abstract

We quantify the impact of offshoring and other globalisation measures on individual perceptions of job security. For the analysis we combine industry-level offshoring measures with micro-level data from a large German household panel survey and estimate ordinal fixed effects models. Our results indicate that offshoring to low-wage countries significantly raises job loss fears whilst offshoring to high-wage countries somewhat lowers them. Over our sample period from 1995 to 2006, offshoring to low and high-wage countries together can account for about 13% of the total increase in job loss fears. High-skilled workers are more sensitive to offshoring although their objective job loss risk is lower relative to low-skilled workers, which we argue reflects the fact that they have more to lose from unemployment.

Suggested Citation

  • Geishecker, Ingo & Riedl, Maximilian & Frijters, Paul, 2012. "Offshoring and job loss fears: An econometric analysis of individual perceptions," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(5), pages 738-747.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:labeco:v:19:y:2012:i:5:p:738-747
    DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2012.05.018
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927537112000619
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.labeco.2012.05.018?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sven Arndt, 1999. "Globalization and economic development," The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(3), pages 309-318.
    2. Christopher F Baum & Mark E. Schaffer & Steven Stillman, 2003. "Instrumental variables and GMM: Estimation and testing," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 3(1), pages 1-31, March.
    3. Gianmarco I. P. Ottaviano & Giovanni Peri & Greg C. Wright, 2021. "Immigration, Offshoring, and American Jobs," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Firms and Workers in a Globalized World Larger Markets, Tougher Competition, chapter 10, pages 291-326, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    4. Alexander Hijzen & Mauro Pisu & Richard Upward & Peter W. Wright, 2011. "Employment, job turnover, and trade in producer services: UK firm-level evidence," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 44(3), pages 1020-1043, August.
    5. Gregori Baetschmann & Kevin E. Staub & Rainer Winkelmann, 2015. "Consistent estimation of the fixed effects ordered logit model," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 178(3), pages 685-703, June.
    6. Ingo Geishecker, 2006. "Does Outsourcing to Central and Eastern Europe Really Threaten Manual Workers’ Jobs in Germany?," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(5), pages 559-583, May.
    7. Robert C. Feenstra & Gordon H. Hanson, 1999. "The Impact of Outsourcing and High-Technology Capital on Wages: Estimates For the United States, 1979–1990," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(3), pages 907-940.
    8. Robert C. Feenstra & Gene M. Grossman & Douglas A. Irwin (ed.), 1996. "The Political Economy of Trade Policy: Papers in Honor of Jagdish Bhagwati," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262061864, December.
    9. Feenstra, Robert C & Hanson, Gordon H, 1996. "Globalization, Outsourcing, and Wage Inequality," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(2), pages 240-245, May.
    10. Clark, Andrew & Knabe, Andreas & Rätzel, Steffen, 2010. "Boon or bane? Others' unemployment, well-being and job insecurity," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 52-61, January.
    11. Ingo Geishecker & Holger Görg, 2008. "Winners and losers: a micro‐level analysis of international outsourcing and wages," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 41(1), pages 243-270, February.
    12. Geishecker, Ingo & Riedl, Maximilian, 2012. "Ordered response models and non-random personality traits: Monte Carlo simulations and a practical guide," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 116, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.
    13. Avraham Ebenstein & Ann Harrison & Margaret McMillan & Shannon Phillips, 2022. "Estimating The Impact Of Trade And Offshoring On American Workers Using The Current Population Surveys," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Globalization, Firms, and Workers, chapter 12, pages 275-289, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    14. Mayda, Anna Maria & Rodrik, Dani, 2005. "Why are some people (and countries) more protectionist than others?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(6), pages 1393-1430, August.
    15. Petri Böckerman, 2004. "Perception of Job Instability in Europe," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 67(3), pages 283-314, July.
    16. Biscourp, Pierre & Kramarz, Francis, 2007. "Employment, skill structure and international trade: Firm-level evidence for France," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 22-51, May.
    17. Green, Francis & Felstead, Alan & Burchell, Brendan, 2000. "Job Insecurity and the Difficulty of Regaining Employment: An Empirical Study of Unemployment Expectations," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 62(0), pages 855-883, Special I.
    18. Urban, Dieter M & Weder di Mauro, Beatrice & Moser, Christoph, 2009. "Offshoring, Firm Performance and Establishment-Level Employment: Identifying Productivity and Downsizing Effects," CEPR Discussion Papers 7455, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    19. Christopher F Baum & Mark E. Schaffer & Steven Stillman, 2007. "Enhanced routines for instrumental variables/GMM estimation and testing," CERT Discussion Papers 0706, Centre for Economic Reform and Transformation, Heriot Watt University.
    20. Mary Amiti & Jozef Konings, 2007. "Trade Liberalization, Intermediate Inputs, and Productivity: Evidence from Indonesia," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(5), pages 1611-1638, December.
    21. Burda, Michael C. & Mertens, Antje, 2001. "Estimating wage losses of displaced workers in Germany," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 15-41, January.
    22. Kenneth F. Scheve & Matthew J. Slaughter, 2001. "Labor Market Competition And Individual Preferences Over Immigration Policy," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 83(1), pages 133-145, February.
    23. Blanchflower, David G, 1991. "Fear, Unemployment and Pay Flexibility," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 101(406), pages 483-496, May.
    24. Gianmarco I. P. Ottaviano & Giovanni Peri & Greg C. Wright, 2016. "Immigration, Offshoring, and American Jobs," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: The Economics of International Migration, chapter 4, pages 117-151, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    25. Stephen Nickell & Patricia Jones & Glenda Quintini, 2002. "A Picture of Job Insecurity Facing British Men," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(476), pages 1-27, January.
    26. Gene M. Grossman & Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, 2008. "Trading Tasks: A Simple Theory of Offshoring," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(5), pages 1978-1997, December.
    27. Schmidt, Stefanie R, 1999. "Long-Run Trends in Workers' Beliefs about Their Own Job Security: Evidence from the General Social Survey," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 17(4), pages 127-141, October.
    28. Melvin Stephens, 2004. "Job Loss Expectations, Realizations, and Household Consumption Behavior," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(1), pages 253-269, February.
    29. Charles F. Manski & John D. Straub, 2000. "Worker Perceptions of Job Insecurity in the Mid-1990s: Evidence from the Survey of Economic Expectations," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 35(3), pages 447-479.
    30. White, Halbert, 1980. "A Heteroskedasticity-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimator and a Direct Test for Heteroskedasticity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(4), pages 817-838, May.
    31. Gary Chamberlain, 1980. "Analysis of Covariance with Qualitative Data," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 47(1), pages 225-238.
    32. Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell & Paul Frijters, 2004. "How Important is Methodology for the estimates of the determinants of Happiness?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 114(497), pages 641-659, July.
    33. Kenneth Scheve & Matthew J. Slaughter, 2004. "Economic Insecurity and the Globalization of Production," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 48(4), pages 662-674, October.
    34. Arellano, M, 1987. "Computing Robust Standard Errors for Within-Groups Estimators," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 49(4), pages 431-434, November.
    35. Alexander Hijzen & Richard Upward & Peter W. Wright, 2010. "The Income Losses of Displaced Workers," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 45(1).
    36. Geishecker, Ingo, 2008. "The impact of international outsourcing on individual employment security: A micro-level analysis," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 291-314, June.
    37. Michael Pfaffermayr & Peter Egger & Andrea Weber, 2007. "Sectoral adjustment of employment to shifts in outsourcing and trade: evidence from a dynamic fixed effects multinomial logit model," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(3), pages 559-580.
    38. Gert G. Wagner & Joachim R. Frick & Jürgen Schupp, 2007. "The German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) – Scope, Evolution and Enhancements," Schmollers Jahrbuch : Journal of Applied Social Science Studies / Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, vol. 127(1), pages 139-169.
    39. Moulton, Brent R, 1990. "An Illustration of a Pitfall in Estimating the Effects of Aggregate Variables on Micro Unit," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 72(2), pages 334-338, May.
    40. Jakob R. Munch, 2010. "Whose Job Goes Abroad? International Outsourcing and Individual Job Separations," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 112(2), pages 339-360, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Riedl, Maximilian, 2013. "Wage bargaining, job loss fears and offshoring," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 174, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.
    2. Akay, Alpaslan & Savsin, Selen, 2022. "Offshoring and well-being of workers," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 388-407.
    3. David Hummels & Jakob R. Munch & Chong Xiang, 2018. "Offshoring and Labor Markets," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 56(3), pages 981-1028, September.
    4. Linda Andersson & Patrik Karpaty & Selen Savsin, 2017. "Labour Demand, Offshoring and Inshoring: Evidence from Swedish Firm-level Data," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(2), pages 240-274, February.
    5. Baumgarten, Daniel & Geishecker, Ingo & Görg, Holger, 2013. "Offshoring, tasks, and the skill-wage pattern," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 132-152.
    6. Martin Borowiecki & Bernhard Dachs & Doris Hanzl-Weiss & Steffen Kinkel & Johannes Pöschl & Magdolna Sass & Thomas Christian Schmall & Robert Stehrer & Andrea Szalavetz, 2012. "Global Value Chains and the EU Industry," wiiw Research Reports 383, The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw.
    7. Jan Hogrefe & Yao Yao, 2016. "Offshoring and labor income risk: an empirical investigation," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 50(3), pages 1045-1063, May.
    8. Ronald Bachmann & Sebastian Braun, 2011. "The Impact Of International Outsourcing On Labour Market Dynamics In Germany," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 58(1), pages 1-28, February.
    9. Holger Görg & Dennis Görlich, 2015. "Offshoring, wages and job security of temporary workers," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 151(3), pages 533-554, August.
    10. Lurweg, Maren, 2010. "Perceived job insecurity, unemployment risk and international trade: A micro-level analysis of employees in German service industries," CAWM Discussion Papers 32, University of Münster, Münster Center for Economic Policy (MEP).
    11. Ingo Geishecker, 2010. "Perceived Job Insecurity and Well-Being Revisited: Towards Conceptual Clarity," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 282, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    12. Marcel Garz, 2012. "Job Insecurity Perceptions and Media Coverage of Labor Market Policy," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 33(4), pages 528-544, December.
    13. Katharina Längle, 2020. "Offshoring: What Consequences for Workers? Evidence from Global Value Chains," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 20005, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    14. Kunze, Lars & Suppa, Nicolai, 2017. "Bowling alone or bowling at all? The effect of unemployment on social participation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 213-235.
    15. Ronald Bachmann & Daniel Baumgarten & Joel Stiebale, 2014. "Foreign direct investment, heterogeneous workers and employment security: Evidence from Germany," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 47(3), pages 720-757, August.
    16. Bart Hertveldt & Bernhard Michel, 2013. "Offshoring and the Skill Structure of Labour Demand in Belgium," De Economist, Springer, vol. 161(4), pages 399-420, December.
    17. Verena Dill & Uwe Jirjahn, 2014. "Foreign Owners and Perceived Job Insecurity in Germany: Evidence from Linked Employer-Employee Data," Research Papers in Economics 2014-09, University of Trier, Department of Economics.
    18. Katharina Längle, 2020. "Offshoring: What Consequences for Workers? Evidence from Global Value Chains," Post-Print halshs-02899944, HAL.
    19. Katharina Längle, 2020. "Offshoring: What Consequences for Workers? Evidence from Global Value Chains," Working Papers hal-02548691, HAL.
    20. Konstantin Koerner & Mathilde Le Moigne, 2023. "FDI and onshore task composition: evidence from German firms with affiliates in the Czech Republic," Journal for Labour Market Research, Springer;Institute for Employment Research/ Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), vol. 57(1), pages 1-42, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:labeco:v:19:y:2012:i:5:p:738-747. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/labeco .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.