The decision to work and its levels of intensity are estimated for the real estate brokerage industry where workers can set their own hours. A three-stage model of the brokerage labor market is presented with decisions made recursively between full- and part-time status, wage offers and hours...

Besides material offshoring, economists have started to analyze the impact of service offshoring on domestic employment. Services are of particular interest since their significance has grown not only in terms of quantity, but also of qualitative understanding. One decade ago, most services were...

Besides material offshoring, economists have started to analyze the impact of service offshoring on domestic employment. Services are of particular interest since their significance has grown not only in terms of quantity, but also of qualitative understanding. One decade ago, most services were...

Most studies of offshoring rely on a 'proportionality assumption' where every sector is assumed to import each material and service input in the same proportion as its economy-wide use. We assess the bias resulting from this assumption. Since Germany collects imported inputs directly, we are...

Foreign direct investment (FDI) is becoming increasingly critical to the economies of developing countries, in part due to a major expansion in the scope of global value chains (GVCs), whereby lead firms outsource parts of their production and services activities across complex international...

A vast set of empirical evidence has been amassed over the past decade on the existence and direction of foreign direct investment (FDI)-generated horizontal and vertical spillovers. Overall, the results are mixed, and suggest that the theoretical postulated spillover effects often do not...

This paper uses data from the Indonesian manufacturing census in order to uncover the determinants of firm exports over the period 1990-2005. We examine to what extent differences in firm export propensity and intensity are a consequence of firm-level (microeconomic), of place-based...

We compare neoclassical and classical theories of outsourcing. The former is premised on an improved international division of labor and predicts a rise in the return to skill. This contrasts with the classical model, which emphasizes the distribution of income between labor and capital and its...

Global value chains (GVCs) are playing an increasingly important role in business strategies, which has profoundly changed international trade and development paradigms. GVCs now represent a new path for development by helping developing countries accelerate industrialization and the...