Measuring the Size, Scope, and Impact of Trade in Services

国际服务贸易快速发展。随着服务贸易的增长，美国失业工人的构成正在发生变化——虽然制造业工人在历史上占失业工人的一半以上，但在最近的经济衰退中，非制造业工人占失业工人的70%。如果这些趋势是相关的，那么受国际贸易影响的产业结构的变化可能会对未来美国产业和劳动力市场的结构产生深远的影响。目前，人们对服务业离岸外包的规模和程度，以及它对美国经济的影响知之甚少。更根本的是，对国际服务贸易的实证研究很少。关于商品贸易的详细产品信息的广泛可用性，以及对生产商的公司和工厂级信息的获取，催生了大量关于贸易对美国制造业影响的实证研究。数据的广泛可得性也促进了关于国际贸易对劳动力市场影响的实证文献，再次侧重于制造业。没有关于服务贸易的相关文献。关于服务贸易的实证研究缺乏及其对国内经济的影响的一个重要因素是，关于服务贸易的官方统计数据相对缺乏细节。该项目的目标是制定服务贸易的规模和范围的措施，并对这种贸易对美国公司和美国工人的影响进行估计。为了解决官方统计数据不足的问题，该项目将发展一种新的经验方法，详细查明可能受到国际贸易影响的服务活动。识别潜在可贸易服务活动的方法是新颖的：该项目使用贸易理论模型的含义来开发服务活动地理集中度的度量，以识别似乎在美国境内进行交易的行业和职业。识别可交易行业和职业的能力是经验战略的一个重要特征，因为据报道，许多离岸服务活动都是服务“生产”过程中的任务（例如，银行关系没有迁移到海外，而是客户服务/呼叫中心组件被移动）；与工业相比，职业与这些类型的活动更密切相关。可以在美国境内交易的服务活动被推断为具有潜在的国际贸易潜力。该项目将通过开发和检查有关实际交易的服务活动的详细公司层面微数据，来完善潜在交易服务的列表。该项目将使用美国经济分析局（BEA）收集的美国跨国公司服务进出口信息和人口普查局收集的美国公司服务出口的企业层面微观数据，以确定实际交易的详细水平的服务活动。经济分析局和人口普查局的数据提供了一种方法来检验和改进地理集中方法对贸易能力的影响。有了完善的服务贸易活动清单，该项目将利用人口普查局服务机构的纵向工厂级微观数据，审查服务贸易对国内公司的影响。最后，该项目将利用《流离失所工人调查》调查服务贸易对国内劳动力市场结果的影响，包括失业风险、再就业可能性、失业持续时间和收入变化。该项目的研究结果将对国际服务贸易的经济学实证文献以及服务贸易对美国企业和工人的影响做出重大贡献。预计该项目还将对正在进行的有关国际服务贸易影响的公共政策辩论产生重大影响。除了分析结果之外，该项目还将在人口普查局和经济分析局开发新的数据资源，研究人员可以利用这些资源对服务贸易进行进一步的研究。

International trade in services is growing rapidly. Coincident with increasing services trade, thecomposition of displaced workers in the US is changing - while manufacturing workers historicallyaccounted for more than half of displaced workers, non-manufacturing workers accounted for 70 percentof displaced workers in the most recent recession. If these trends are related, the changing mix ofindustries exposed to international trade may have deep implications for the structure of US industry andlabor markets in the future. Currently, there is little understanding of the size and extent of servicesoffshoring or what impact it is having on the US economy. More fundamentally, there is little empiricalresearch examining international trade in services.The broad availability of detailed product information on goods trade and access to firm and plantlevel information on producers has spawned a wealth of empirical research on the impact of trade on USmanufacturing. The broad availability of data has also fostered an empirical literature on the labor marketimpacts of international trade, again focused on the manufacturing sector. No such literatures exist fortrade in services. An important factor in the scarcity of empirical research on trade in services, and itsimplications for the domestic economy, is the relative lack of detail in official statistical data on servicestrade.The objectives of this project are to develop measures of the size and scope of trade in servicesand to construct estimates of the impact of this trade on US firms and US workers. To address theinadequacy of official statistical data, the project will develop a new empirical approach to identify, at adetailed level, service activities that are potentially exposed to international trade. The approach toidentifying service activities that are potentially tradable is novel: the project uses an implication oftheoretical models of trade to develop a measure of the geographic concentration of service activities toidentify industries and occupations that appear to be traded within the US. The ability to identify bothindustries and occupations that are tradable is an important feature of the empirical strategy because manyof the service activities that are reportedly being offshored are tasks within the service 'production'process (for example, the banking relationship is not relocated offshore, rather the customer service/callcenter component is moved); occupations correspond more closely to these types of activities than doindustries. Service activities that can be traded within the US are inferred to be potentially tradableinternationally.The project will refine the list of potentially traded services by developing and examining detailedfirm-level microdata on what service activities are actually traded. The project will use information on USmultinationals' services imports and exports collected by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) andestablishment-level microdata on US firms' services exports collected by the Census Bureau to identify ata detailed level service activities that are actually traded. The BEA and Census Bureau data provide a wayto test and improve the tradability implications of the geographic concentration methodology.With the refined list of traded service activities, the project will examine the impact of trade inservices on domestic firms using longitudinal plant-level microdata on service establishments at theCensus Bureau. Lastly, the project will investigate the impact of trade in services on domestic labormarket outcomes, including the risk of job loss, likelihood of reemployment, duration of joblessness, andearnings change, using the Displaced Worker Survey.The results from this project will make a significant contribution to the empirical literature ineconomics on international trade in services and the implications of services trade for US firms andworkers. The project is also anticipated to have a significant impact on the ongoing public policy debateregarding the implications of international trade in services. In addition to analytical results, the projectwill develop new data resources at the Census Bureau and BEA that researchers can use to pursueadditional research on trade in services.