IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/irv/wpaper/060719.html

Offshoring and Unemployment

Author

Listed:
  • Devashish Mitra

    (Department of Economics, Syracuse University, NBER and IZA)

  • Priya Ranjan

    (Department of Economics, University of California-Irvine)

Abstract

In this paper, in order to study the impact of offshoring on sectoral and economywide rates of unemployment, we construct a two sector general equilibrium model in which labor is mobile across the two sectors, and unemployment is caused by search frictions. We find that, contrary to general perception, wage increases and sectoral unemployment decreases due to offshoring. This result can be understood to arise from the productivity enhancing (cost reducing) effect of offshoring. If the search cost is identical in the two sectors, or even if the search cost is higher in the sector which experiences offshoring, the economywide rate of unemployment decreases. We also find multiple equilibrium outcomes in the extent of offshoring and therefore, in the unemployment rate. Furthermore, a firm can increase its domestic employment through offshoring. Also, such a firm's domestic employment can be higher than a firm that chooses to remain fully domestic. When we modify the model to disallow intersectoral labor mobility, the negative relative price effect on the sector in which firms offshore some of their activity becomes stronger. In such a case, it is possible for this effect to offset the positive productivity effect, and result in a rise in unemployment in that sector. In the other sector, offshoring has a much stronger unemployment reducing effect in the absence of intersectoral labor mobility than in the presence of it. Finally, allowing for an endogenous number of varieties provides an additional indirect channel, through which sectoral unemployment goes down due to the entry of new firms brought about by offshoring.

Suggested Citation

  • Devashish Mitra & Priya Ranjan, 2007. "Offshoring and Unemployment," Working Papers 060719, University of California-Irvine, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:irv:wpaper:060719
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.economics.uci.edu/files/docs/workingpapers/2006-07/Ranjan-19.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tadashi Morita & Yukiko Sawada & Kazuhiro Yamamoto, 2020. "Subsidy competition and imperfect labor markets," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 22(3), pages 698-728, June.
    2. Lo Turco, Alessia & Maggioni, Daniela & Picchio, Matteo, 2013. "Offshoring and job stability: Evidence from Italian manufacturing," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 27-46.
    3. Karabay, Bilgehan & McLaren, John, 2010. "Trade, offshoring, and the invisible handshake," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 26-34, September.
    4. Frank Butter & Jan Möhlmann & Paul Wit, 2008. "Trade and product innovations as sources for productivity increases: an empirical analysis," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 30(3), pages 201-211, December.
    5. Dutt, Pushan & Mitra, Devashish & Ranjan, Priya, 2009. "International trade and unemployment: Theory and cross-national evidence," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(1), pages 32-44, June.
    6. Moritz Ritter, 2014. "Offshoring and occupational specificity of human capital," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 17(4), pages 780-798, October.
    7. Felbermayr, Gabriel & Prat, Julien & Schmerer, Hans-Jörg, 2011. "Globalization and labor market outcomes: Wage bargaining, search frictions, and firm heterogeneity," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(1), pages 39-73, January.
    8. Sethupathy, Guru, 2013. "Offshoring, wages, and employment: Theory and evidence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 73-97.
    9. Luca David Opromolla & Pedro Martins, 2011. "Why Ex(Im)porters Pay More: Evidence from Matched Firm-Worker Panels," Working Papers w201123, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
    10. Halit Yanikkaya, 2013. "Is trade liberalization a solution to the unemployment problem?," Portuguese Economic Journal, Springer;Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestao, vol. 12(1), pages 57-85, April.
    11. Ann Harrison & John McLaren & Margaret S. McMillan, 2010. "Recent Findings on Trade and Inequality," NBER Working Papers 16425, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Mohammed, Mikidadu, 2018. "Do Import Tariffs Generate Stagflationary Tendencies?," EconStor Preprints 201013, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    13. Castellani, Davide & Mariotti, Ilaria & Piscitello, Lucia, 2008. "The impact of outward investments on parent company's employment and skill composition: Evidence from the Italian case," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 81-94, March.
    14. Richard A. Brecher & Zhiqi Chen & Zhihao Yu, 2013. "The Trouble with Offshoring: Static and Dynamic Losses in the Presence of Unemployment," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(1), pages 1-11, January.
    15. Richard A. Brecher & Zhiqi Chen, 2010. "Unemployment of Skilled and Unskilled Labor in an Open Economy: International Trade, Migration, and Outsourcing," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(5), pages 990-1000, November.
    16. Elhanan Helpman & Oleg Itskhoki, 2010. "Labour Market Rigidities, Trade and Unemployment," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 77(3), pages 1100-1137.
    17. Richard A. Brecher & Zhiqi Chen, 2014. "Unemployment and welfare consequences of international outsourcing under monopolistic competition," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 47(2), pages 540-554, May.
    18. Bruno Decreuse & Paul Maarek, 2015. "FDI and the Labor Share in Developing Countries : A Theory and Some Evidence," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 119-120, pages 289-319.
    19. Mohammed, Mikidadu, 2018. "Do import tariffs generate stagflationary tendencies?," EconStor Preprints 181674, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, revised 2018.
    20. Thede, Susanna, 2012. "A Simple Model of Trade, Job Task Offshoring and Social Insurance," Working Papers 2012:16, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    21. Ranjan, Priya, 2013. "Offshoring, unemployment, and wages: The role of labor market institutions," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(1), pages 172-186.
    22. Ann Harrison & John McLaren & Margaret McMillan, 2011. "Recent Perspectives on Trade and Inequality," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 3(1), pages 261-289, September.
    23. Helpman, Elhanan & Itskhoki, Oleg & Redding, Stephen J., 2010. "Trade and labor market outcomes," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 121937, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    24. Carl Davidson & Steven J. Matusz, 2010. "Our Motivation," Introductory Chapters, in: International Trade with Equilibrium Unemployment, Princeton University Press.
    25. Lars Calmfors & Giancarlo Corsetti & Michael P. Devereux & Gilles Saint-Paul & Hans-Werner Sinn & Jan-Egbert Sturm & Xavier Vives, 2008. "Chapter 3: The effect of globalisation on Western European jobs: curse or blessing?," EEAG Report on the European Economy, CESifo, vol. 0, pages 71-104, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • F12 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies; Fragmentation
    • F16 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade and Labor Market Interactions
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:irv:wpaper:060719. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Melissa Valdez (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deucius.html .

    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.