Offshoring, Matching, and Wage Inequality: Theory and Evidence

This paper examines how offshoring affects worker skill demands and studies its implications for wage inequality. Using Danish administrative data, we find that offshoring increases firm-level demand for higher skills in occupations with high exposure to foreign competition. This effect is more pronounced in low-productivity firms, highlighting distributional impacts across firms. By constructing a Becker-type worker-firm matching model in a global economy, we demonstrate underlying mechanisms and quantify the role of offshoring-induced adjustments. Offshoring increases firm similarity in worker skill and wages within high-exposed jobs, leading to a decrease in between-firm inequality—a contrast to the effects of technological change.