Research

Working papers

Offshoring, Tasks and Training

This paper investigates how firms that offshore parts of their production process use retraining of workers to adjust their task structure. Using matched employer-employee data for Denmark, the paper shows that the rising supply of intermediate goods from China and Eastern European countries in the first decade of the century, induced a reorganization that reduced employment in manual occupations. Moreover, offshoring-induced turnover contributes to a decline in the average age of the workforce, in particular through the hiring of younger individuals in cognitive occupations. At the same time firms increase training of workers in routine and manual occupations and reallocate part of them to tasks with lower routine-manual content.


Selected work in progress