Trade in services : IT and task content
In this paper we investigate the determinants of the dramatic increase in services tradability focusing on the extensive margin of the phenomenon. We use balance sheet and firm-level service trade information over the period 1995-2005 provided by the National Bank of Belgium and we merge it with information on the evolution of information technology use and tasks performed by workers from the qualification and career survey provided by the BIBB-IAB. We show that technological change, measured either by the more intensive use of information technologies or by changes in the task content of jobs, has substantially contributed to the increase in the number of service-trading firms. Interestingly, we find evidence of a churning effect. While technological change has induced net entry into service trading, it has also increased the likelihood of both gross entry and exit of firms. Furthermore, our evidence suggests that due to the peculiar nature of services provision, the change in the tasks content of jobs is a better measure of technological change than the use of information technologies. Our results are robust to controlling for service trade liberalization and offshoring.
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. 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.
| Length: | 56 pages |
| Date of creation: | Oct 2010 |
| Date of revision: | |
| Handle: | RePEc:nbb:reswpp:201010-200 |
| Contact details of provider: | Postal: Phone: (+ 32) (0) 2 221 25 34 Fax: (+ 32) (0) 2 221 31 62 Web page: http://www.nbb.beEmail: More information through EDIRC
|
No references listed on IDEAS
You can help add them by filling out this form.
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbb:reswpp:201010-200. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ()
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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.