Research

We study the role of offshoring in understanding long-run environmental impacts of tradeliberalization and the cleanup of US manufacturing. Leveraging detailed establishment-leveldata and a change in US trade policy toward China in the early 2000s, we show that USestablishments decrease toxic emissions in response to a reduction in trade policy uncertainty.Emission abatement is more pronounced for establishments that are more likely to engage inoffshoring activities. We provide comprehensive evidence that supports the pollution offshoringhypothesis: US manufacturers, especially those that emit pollutants intensely, source from abroad and establish more subsidiaries in China following the event.

This paper studies long-run differences in intergenerational occupational mobility between Black and White Americans. Combining data from linked historical censuses and contemporary large-scale surveys, we provide a comprehensive set of mobility measures based on Markov chains that trace out the short- and long-run dynamics of occupational differences. Our findings highlight the unique importance of changes in mobility experienced by the 1940-1950 birth cohorts in shaping the current occupational distribution and reducing the racial gap. We further explore the properties of continuing occupational inequalities and argue that these disparities are better understood by a lack of exchange mobility rather than structural mobility and as such, extrapolating contemporary occupational dynamics cannot be expected to disappear on their own.

This paper examines the importance of trade-induced restructuring at the extensive margin, using a novel measure of new work---jobs employing new knowledge, skills, and technologies---based on the emergence of new job titles over time. I show that import competition significantly increases the adoption of new work in US manufacturing industries. The restructuring process, facilitated by offshoring, importantly explains compositional shifts toward non-production activities. These adjustments, amplified through supply chain linkages at the local labor market level, generate positive spillovers to local service industries. Finally, I show that new work is a key mechanism through which trade shocks can increase local wage inequality.

The evolution of work is of emerging importance to advanced economies' growth. In this study, we develop a new semantic-distance-based algorithm to identify ``new work," namely the new types of jobs introduced in the US. We characterize how ``new work" relates to task content and skill characteristics of workers and document its geographic distribution and association with employment growth. Then, we analyze whether local factors associated in the previous literature with agglomeration economies and productivity growth  as well as local exposures to global shocks---technology, trade, immigration, and population aging---predict the creation of ``new work."  We find local supply of college educated in 1980 as the strongest predictor of ``new work." Using the historical location of 4-year colleges, a strong instrument for local college share, we find a positive and significant causal effect of local supply of human capital on ``new work." 

This paper examines how offshoring affects worker skill demands and studies its implications for wage inequality. Using Danish administrative data, we find that offshoring increases firm-level demand for higher skills in occupations with high exposure to foreign competition. This effect is more pronounced in low-productivity firms, highlighting distributional impacts across firms. By constructing a Becker-type worker-firm matching model in a global economy, we demonstrate underlying mechanisms and quantify the role of offshoring-induced adjustments. Offshoring increases firm similarity in worker skill and wages within high-exposed jobs, leading to a decrease in between-firm inequality---a contrast to the effects of technological change.