Trading Tasks: A Simple Theory of Offshoring

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Grossman, Gene A.; Rossi-Hansberg, Esteban
• 署名单位: Princeton University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.98.5.1978
• 发表日期: 2008
• 页码: 1978-1997
• 关键词: vertical specialization; MULTISTAGE PRODUCTION; factor prices; world-trade; ECONOMY; GROWTH; FIRMS

摘要

We propose a theory of the global production process that focuses on tradeable tasks, and use it to study how falling costs of offshoring affect factor prices in the source country. We identify a productivity effect of task trade that benefits the factor whose tasks are more easily moved offshore. In the light of this effect, reductions in the cost of trading tasks can generate shared gains for all domestic factors, in contrast to the distributional conflict that typically results from reductions in the cost of trading goods.