Collaborative Research: Economic Insecurity and the Globalization of Production

在世界各地，似乎存在着对旨在进一步自由化国际贸易、移民和外国直接投资（FDI）的政策的强烈反对。近年来的大量政治事件表明，自由化的趋势明显逆转，许多著名观察家对这种"全球化反弹"提出了警告。"越来越多的研究正在研究这种反弹背后的政治经济力量。虽然这项研究已经确定了国际经济自由化的政治冲突的一些关键来源，一些核心问题仍然没有答案。最重要的是，关于全球化的辩论经常涉及到一体化对个人经济不安全的影响。最常提出的论点是，全球化增加了不安全。虽然这一主张是关于国际经济一体化的政治和学术辩论的核心，但没有实证研究直接检验这种关系。事实上，在许多情况下，甚至不清楚这种说法的理论依据是什么。本研究项目的主要目标是从理论和经验上评估全球化是否以及如何增加先进工业民主国家的个人经济不安全感。主要研究者提出了一个理论论点，即跨国企业（MNE）的外国直接投资是全球化在发达经济体产生经济不安全的关键机制，并使用个人层面的调查数据直接检验这种联系。没有现有的研究作出了直接的实证检验的假设之间的关系，生产的跨国化和经济不安全的个别工人。主要调查人员认为，工人经济不安全感的增加可能与就业和/或与雇主的工资互动恶化有关。这些想法可以在劳动经济学的标准框架中形式化，即劳动力需求弹性的上升和/或利润/风险分担机会的下降。跨国公司更多的外国直接投资跨界流动是可能提高弹性和降低利润/风险分担的关键力量。我们的研究将进一步发展这些理论之间的联系不断上升的跨国公司活动和经济不安全。我们的总体实证方法将是研究个人对经济不安全感的自我评估如何与外国直接投资和跨国公司在这些个人居住和工作的行业和/或地区的作用相关。最初，首席调查员将通过结合两个数据集来研究英国：英国家庭小组调查（BHPS）和年度受访者数据库（ARD）。BHPS是一个具有全国代表性的小组，从1991年至今每年调查5，000多个家庭和9，000多名个人。它记录了每个受访者的就业、工资和经济安全感的详细信息。ARD跟踪英国制造活动，更重要的是，每个公司的所有权国籍。根据行业和地区，首席调查员可以计算出外资企业、总部设在英国的跨国公司和纯国内企业在制造业活动中所占的份额。使用来自与ARD相同格式的其他数据文件的非生产活动的类似数据，主要研究者可以将MNE信息合并到BHPS中，从而了解个体反应与MNE活动的关系。这些数据将使我们能够评估外国直接投资活动影响英国劳动力市场结果和个人对经济安全的看法的程度和方式，以及这些关系在过去十年中是否发生了变化。主要研究人员将使用类似的数据集将他们在英国的研究扩展到至少14个其他发达经济体。该项目的比较和时间维度对于评估全球化和不安全之间的关系如何受到外国直接投资活动、经济绩效、劳动力市场制度和福利国家特征的影响至关重要。

Across the world, there appears to be significant opposition to policies aimed at further liberalization of international trade, immigration, and foreign direct investment (FDI). A large number of political events in recent years suggest a marked turn away from liberalization, and many prominent observers have raised alarms about this "globalization backlash." There is a growing body of research examining what political-economy forces underlie this backlash. Although this research has identified some of the key sources of political conflict over international economic liberalization, a number of central questions remain unanswered. Most importantly, debates about globalization frequently involve claims about the impact of integration on individual economic insecurity. The argument most often made is that globalization increases insecurity. Although this claim is central to both political and academic debates about international economic integration, there is no empirical research that has directly tested the relationship. In fact, in many accounts, it is not even clear on what theoretical grounds the claim is made. The primary objective of this research project is to evaluate theoretically and empirically whether and how globalization increases individual economic insecurity in advanced industrial democracies. The Principal Investigators propose to develop a theoretical argument that FDI by multinational enterprises (MNEs) is the critical mechanism through which globalization generates economic insecurity in advanced economies and to directly test this connection using individual-level survey data. No existing research has made a direct empirical test of the hypothesized relationship between the multinationalization of production and the economic insecurity of individual workers. The Principal Investigators contend that rising economic insecurity among workers may relate to deteriorating employment and/or wage interactions with their employers. These ideas can be formalized in standard frameworks of labor economics in terms of either rising elasticities of demand for labor and/or declining profit/risk- sharing opportunities. Greater cross-border flows of FDI by MNEs are key forces that are likely both to raise elasticities and lower profit/risk sharing. Our research will further develop these theoretical connections between rising MNE activity and economic insecurity. Our overall empirical approach will be to examine how individual self-assessments of economic insecurity correlate with the role of FDI and MNEs in the industries and/or regions in which these individuals reside and work. Initially, the Principal Investigators will study Great Britain by combining two data sets: the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and the Annual Respondents Database (ARD). The BHPS is a nationally-representative panel of more than 5,000 households and over 9,000 individuals surveyed annually from 1991 to the present. It records detailed information about each respondent's employment, wages, and perceptions of economic security. The ARD tracks U.K. manufacturing activity and, importantly, the nationality of ownership for each firm. By industry and region, the Principal Investigators can then calculate the share of manufacturing activity accounted for by foreign-owned firms, British-headquartered MNEs, and purely domestic firms. With similar data for non-manufacturing activity from other data files of the same form as the ARD, the Principal Investigators can then merge MNE information into the BHPS and thereby see how individual responses relate to MNE activity. Together these data will allow us to evaluate the extent and way in which FDI activity affects labor market outcomes and perceptions of economic security across individuals in the UK and whether these relationships have changed over the last decade. The Principal Investigators will extend their UK study to at least 14 other advanced economies using similar datasets. The comparative and temporal dimension of the project is critical for evaluating how the relationship between globalization and insecurity is affected by variation in the extent of FDI activity, economic performance, labor market institutions, and characteristics of welfare states.