Working Paper: NBER ID: w12398
Authors: N. Gregory Mankiw; Phillip Swagel
Abstract: This paper reviews the political uproar over offshore outsourcing connected with the release of the Economic Report of the President (ERP) in February 2004, examines the differing ways in which economists and non-economists talk about offshore outsourcing, and assesses the empirical evidence on the importance of offshore outsourcing in accounting for the weak labor market from 2001 to 2004. Even with important gaps in the data, the empirical literature is able to conclude that offshore outsourcing is unlikely to have accounted for a meaningful part of the job losses in the recent downturn or contributed much to the slow labor market rebound. The empirical evidence to date, while still tentative, actually suggests that increased employment in the overseas affiliates of U.S. multinationals is associated with more employment in the U.S. parent rather than less.
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JEL Codes: No JEL codes provided
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Increased employment in overseas affiliates of U.S. multinationals (F29) | Increased employment in U.S. parent companies (F23) |
| Increased employment in overseas affiliates of U.S. multinationals (F29) | Domestic job creation (J68) |
| Policies aimed at preventing trade (F13) | Lower living standards (I31) |