The Exact Measurement of Productivity, Outsourcing, and its Effects on Wages: An Agenda for Research

低技能美国人最近的经济表现是一个重要的政策话题，也是学术界密切关注的主题。在过去的二十年里，低技能工人的工资无论从绝对值还是相对于高技能工人的工资而言都大幅下降。对于工资不平等加剧，最被广泛引用的两种解释是技能偏向的技术变革和与低工资国家的贸易。尽管有大量的文献，但在贸易、技术和其他因素对近期工资变化的相对贡献上，研究人员几乎没有达成一致。该项目将制定一个实证框架，确定贸易和技术如何影响要素价格，并将该框架应用于来自发达国家和发展中国家的数据。关于贸易和工资的文献绝大多数集中在最终产品的贸易上。然而，美国贸易的很大一部分是外包的结果，即国内公司进口中间投入。美国公司的外包将劳动密集型任务，如零部件生产或最终产品组装，转移到低工资国家。这改变了美国公司在国内进行的生产活动的范围，而不一定改变他们生产的最终产品。通过这种方式，贸易的影响可以看起来像技术变革的影响。本项目将开发一种实证方法来区分这些。本文将证明，估计贸易和技术对要素价格的影响关键取决于使用正确的生产率衡量标准。将要开发的框架使我们有可能将生产率的变化分解为可归因于创新的部分（使用有关研发支出和信息技术及新资本设备投资的行业数据来衡量）和可归因于外包的部分（使用有关从国外进口中间投入的行业数据来衡量）。该框架将首先应用于美国制造业的数据。这将有助于估计技术变革和全球化对近期美国工资变化的相对贡献。此外，我们将进行若干补充性的研究，它们将：(1)扩展分析框架，以检验外国外包和资本和技术进口对墨西哥劳动力市场的影响；(2)检验美国公司的外包是否有助于西半球低工资国家劳动力市场的整合；(3)衡量亚洲发达国家和发展中国家之间的外包程度，并估计外包对该地区劳动力市场的影响。

The recent economic performance of less-skilled Americans is an important policy topic and the subject of intense academic attention. Over the last two decades, the wages of low-skilled workers have fallen dramatically, both in absolute terms and relative to those of high-skilled workers. The two most widely cited explanations for the rise in wage inequality are skill-biased technical change and trade with low-wage countries. Despite the vast literature, there is little agreement among researchers on the relative contributions of trade, technology, and other factors to the recent wage changes. This project will develop an empirical framework that identifies how trade and technology affect factor prices and apply the framework to data from developed and developing countries. The literature on trade and wages focuses overwhelmingly on trade in final goods. A substantial portion of U.S. trade, however, is the result of outsourcing -- the import of intermediate inputs by domestic firms. Outsourcing by U.S. firms moves labor-intensive tasks, such as the production of components or the assembly of final goods, to low-wage countries. This changes the range of production activities that U.S. firms perform at home without necessarily changing the final goods that they produce. In this way, the effects of trade can look like the effects of technical change. This project will develop an empirical methodology that can distinguish these. It will be demonstrate that estimating the effects of trade and technology on factor prices depends crucially on using the correct measure of productivity. The framework that will be developed makes it possible to decompose changes in productivity into the portion attributable to innovation, measured using industry data on R&D spending and investments in information technology and new capital equipment, and the portion attributable to outsourcing, measured using industry data on the import of intermediate inputs from abroad. The framework will first be applied to data on manufacturing industries in the United States. This will allow estimates of the relative contributions of technological change and globalization to recent U.S. wage changes. In addition, several complementary lines of research we will be pursued which will: (1) extend the analytical framework to examine the effects of foreign outsourcing and imports of capital and technology on labor markets in Mexico, (2) examine whether outsourcing by U.S. firms is contributing to the integration of labor markets in low-wage countries in the Western Hemisphere, and (3) measure the extent of outsourcing between developed and developing nations in Asia and estimate the effect of outsourcing on labor markets in the region.