We set up a two-country general equilibrium model, in which heterogeneous firms from one country (the source country) can offshore routine tasks to a low-wage host country. The most productive firms self-select into offshoring, and the impact on welfare in the source country can be positive or...

We develop a model to explain two-way migration of high-skilled individuals between countries that are similar in their economic characteristics. High-skilled migration results from the combination of workers whose abilities are private knowledge, and a production technology that gives...

We set up a general equilibrium model, in which offshoring to a low-wage country can lead to job polarisation in the high-wage country. Job polarisation is the result of a reallocation of labour across firms that differ in productivity and pay wages that are positively linked to their profits by...

In their famous paper on the "Big Push", Murphy, Shleifer, and Vishny (1989) show how the combination of increasing returns to scale at the firm level and pecuniary externalities can give rise to a poverty trap, thereby formalising an old idea due to Rosenstein-Rodan (1943). We develop in this...

We set up a two-country general equilibrium model, in which heterogeneous firms from one country (the source country) can offshore routine tasks to a low-wage host country. The most productive firms self-select into offshoring, and the impact on welfare in the source country can be positive or...

We develop a model of international trade with a monopsonistically competitive labour market in which firms employ skilled labour for headquarter tasks and unskilled workers to conduct a continuum of production tasks. Firms can enter foreign markets through exporting and through offshoring, and...

This paper sets up a two-country model of offshoring with monopolistically competitive product and monopsonistically competitive labour markets. In our model, an incentive for offshoring exists even between symmetric countries, because shifting part of the production abroad reduces local labour...

This paper identifies a "border" effect in the absence of a border. The finding that trade between East- and West-Japan is 23.1 to 51.3 percent lower than trade within both country parts, is established despite the absence of an obvious east-west division due to historical borders, cultural...

This paper analyzes trade in an asymmetric 2×2×2 world, where the two countries, labelled America and Europe, differ in their attitudes towards wage inequality. In both America and Europe, fair wage considerations compress differentials between the wages for skilled and unskilled workers,...

We show that in a Ricardo-Viner-type trade model with unemployment due to search and matching the productivity effect of offshoring emphasized by Grossman & Rossi-Hansberg (2008) emerges as a vehicle of job creation. Improvements in the technology of offshoring causes job losses at the extensive...