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Winners and losers: A Micro-level Analysis of International Outsourcing and Wages

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  • Görg, Holger
  • Geishecker, Ingo

Abstract

Our paper investigates the link between international outsourcing and wages utilizing a large household panel and combining it with industry level information on industries' outsourcing activities from input-output tables. This approach avoids problems such as aggregation bias, potential endogeneity bias and poor skill definitions that commonly hamper industry-level studies. We find that outsourcing has had a marked impact on wages. Applying two alternative skill classifications we find evidence that a one percentage point increase in outsourcing reduced the wage for workers in the lowest skill categories by up to 1.5% while it increased wages for high-skilled workers by up to 2.6%. This result is robust to a number of different specifications.

Suggested Citation

  • Görg, Holger & Geishecker, Ingo, 2007. "Winners and losers: A Micro-level Analysis of International Outsourcing and Wages," CEPR Discussion Papers 6484, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:6484
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    International outsourcing; Offshoring; Skills; Wages;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F16 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade and Labor Market Interactions
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials

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