Service offshoring and wages: worker-level evidence from Italy

We study the effects of service offshoring on the wages of Italian workers. To this purpose, we build up a novel data set combining information from two different sources: (1) matched employer-employee data based on administrative records from the Italian National Social Security Institute; and (2) industry-level indicators of service offshoring based on Import Matrices released by the Italian Statistical Office. We estimate worker-level wage regressions controlling for a number of employee, firm and industry characteristics. In line with previous studies, we find that service offshoring does not cause significant reductions in workers’ wages. We also find, however, that service offshoring contributes to widening the wage gap between more and less skilled employees. Finally, we document heterogeneity in the effects of service offshoring depending on the type of activities relocated abroad. Specifically, our results show that offshoring of business services exerts moderately negative effects on workers’ wages, whereas offshoring of other services has virtually no impact on individual earnings.