We present a model, in which a small industrialised economy outsources part of its production into a small foreign country which is well endowed with low-skilled labour. We analyse under which conditions sinking trade costs stimulate outsourcing activities, thereby increasing the wage dispersion and, if labour markets are unionised, also the employment of high-skilled relative to low-skilled labour. For a panel of Austrian industries, we find first that decreasing trade barriers, which can be associated with the fall of the Iron Curtain, indeed stimulate outsourcing to Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and second, that outsourcing to these countries significantly shifts relative employment in favour of high- skilled labour.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria in its series Economics working papers with number
2000-24.
Find related papers by JEL classification: C33 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Models with Panel Data F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Country and Industry Studies of Trade F15 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Economic Integration F16 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade and Labor Market Interactions
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.) This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.