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

国际服务贸易增长迅速。随着服务贸易的增长，美国失业工人的构成也在发生变化--尽管历史上制造业工人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，那么国际贸易中行业组合的变化可能会对未来美国工业和劳动力市场的结构产生深远的影响。目前，人们对服务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，几乎没有对国际服务贸易的实证研究。关于货物贸易的详细产品信息以及企业和工厂层面的生产者信息的广泛获取催生了大量关于贸易对美国制造业影响的实证研究。数据的广泛可用性也促进了关于国际贸易的劳动力市场影响的实证文献，再次集中在制造业部门。在服务贸易方面没有这样的文献。服务贸易实证研究的缺乏及其对国内经济的简化的一个重要因素是服务贸易官方统计数据的相对缺乏细节。本项目的目标是制定服务贸易规模和范围的衡量标准，并估算服务贸易对美国公司和美国工人的影响。为了解决官方统计数据不足的问题，该项目将制定一种新的经验方法，以详细查明可能受到国际贸易影响的服务活动。识别潜在可贸易的服务活动的方法是新颖的：该项目使用了贸易理论模型的含义，以制定一个衡量服务活动地理集中度的标准，以确定似乎在美国境内进行贸易的行业和职业。识别可交易的行业和职业的能力是经验策略的一个重要特征，因为许多据报道正在离岸的服务活动是服务“生产”过程中的任务（例如，银行关系没有转移到海外，而是客户服务/呼叫中心组件被转移）;职业比行业更接近这些类型的活动。可以在美国境内进行贸易的服务活动被推断为可能在国际上进行贸易。该项目将通过开发和审查关于实际进行贸易的服务活动的详细的公司级微观数据来完善可能进行贸易的服务清单。该项目将利用经济分析局（Bureau of Economic Analysis）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级微观数据，以确定实际交易的详细服务活动。该项目将利用美国人口普查局的服务企业纵向工厂微观数据，通过完善服务贸易活动清单，研究服务贸易对国内企业的影响。最后，本项目将通过失业调查（Displaced Worker Survey），研究服务贸易对美国国内劳动力市场的影响，包括失业风险、再就业可能性、失业持续时间和收入变化等。本项目的研究结果将对国际服务贸易经济学的实证文献以及服务贸易对美国企业和工人的影响做出重要贡献。预计该项目还将对正在进行的关于国际服务贸易影响的公共政策辩论产生重大影响。除了分析结果外，该项目还在人口普查局和人口普查局开发新的数据资源，研究人员可利用这些资源对服务贸易进行进一步研究。

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.