Ouverture commerciale et marché du travail : une revue de la littérature

This article reviews the recent literature on the impact of trade liberalization on the labor market. It addresses in a first step the 1990?s studies in an attempt to understand the developments of the recent literature on this topic. Statistics suggest that employment structure in Europe and United-States tend to polarize into ?good? and ?bad? jobs. As in the 1990 debate, the two factors responsible for this job polarization are skill bias technical change (SBTC) and international trade. The job content of occupations becomes a central component of polarization analysis. Offshoring might have had an important impact especially if one analyzes all the channels through which it can affect labor market (change in the organizational structure, service offshoring, defensive innovation). This paper reviews the empirical and theoretical littérature on the effect of offshoring on the labor market but also tries to identify research needs and unexplored trails on this topic. The challenge for researchers today is to understand the channels through which offshoring acts on the labor market.