We analyze the relationship between offshoring and the onshore workforce composition in German multinational enterprises (MNEs), using plant data that allow us to discern tasks, occupations, and workforce skills. Offshoring is associated with a statistically significant shift towards more...

This Paper shows that international trade affects the demand for skill through an export-based channel. Our working hypothesis is that the very act of exporting requires an effort of skill upgrading, in particular among occupations related to marketing and development. Using firm level data, we...

Since changes in trade openness are typically confounded with other factors, it has been difficult to identify the labour market consequences of increased international trade. The advent of the United States Interstate Highway System provides a unique policy experiment, which I use to identify...

We compare the trade and labour approaches to wage inequality. We first look at the theoretical differences, stressing the different roles ascribed to sector and factor bias, labour supply and the theory of technical change in trade models with endogenous prices. We then briefly review some of...

This Paper presents firm level evidence on the dynamics of non-manual wage premia and employment shares in Italian manufacturing during the nineties. We find that the relative stability of aggregate wage premia and employment shares hides offsetting disaggregate forces. First, while technical...

We study the effect of 'globalization' on wage inequality. Our 'global' economy resembles Rosen's (1981) 'Superstars' economy, where a) innovations in production and communication technologies enable suppliers to reach a larger mass of consumers and to improve the (perceived) quality of their...

This paper considers an economy where skilled and unskilled workers use different technologies. The rate of improvement of each technology is determined by a profit-maximizing R&D sector. When there is a high proportion of skilled workers in the labour-force, the market for skill-complementary...

This paper combines representative worker-level data that cover time-varying job-level task characteristics of an economy over a long time span with sector-level bilateral trade data. We carefully create longitudinally consistent workplace characteristics from the German Qualification and Career...