Topics Labour and Migration Outsourcing and skills an empirical investigation (by M. Landesmann and R. Stehrer; pp. 15 …-20) Keywords outsourcing, labour, skills, specialization Countries covered European Union, New EU Member States, Asia, USA Topics …

discussion of the impact of global economic integration upon labour markets the impact of outsourcing upon wage structures and … upon productivity, the effects of NAFTA upon the US, Mexican and Canadian economies, the issue of outsourcing in services …

, which affects the behaviour of agents inside the corporation. This way, trade integration leads to waves of outsourcing and …

prevalence of outsourcing and foreign direct investment. …

We study the determinants of the location of sub-contracted activity in a general equilibrium model of outsourcing and … trade. We model outsourcing as an activity that requires search for a partner and relationship-specific investments that are … governed by incomplete contracts. The extent of international outsourcing depends inter alia on the thickness of the domestic …

. Outsourcing decisions then balance flexibility gains against hold-up costs of opportunistic behaviour by outside contractors. In … equilibrium, the degree of outsourcing is shown to depend on the degree of product market competition, contractor's bargaining … power, and the volatility of demand shocks. Our main result is that an increase in the degree of outsourcing amplifies the …