The policy debate views offshoring as job destruction. Theoretical models of offshoring mostly assume full employment. We develop a model of task trade that allows for equilibrium unemployment. In this model, there are two margins of adjustment. At the extensive margin, moving tasks offshore...

I develop a generalized factor price frontier which incorporates endogenous adjustment of international fragmentation in multistage production, allowing for a continuum of stages. This allows us to address fragmentation, not only as an exogenous event, but also as an integral part of endogenous...

Economic globalization causes an increasing international fragmentation (disintegration) of value-added-chains, whereby firms outsource components of production to foreign markets. There is a high level of concern about unwelcome distributional effects. This paper provides a theoretical...

The paper uses a specific-factors framework to address efficiency and distributional implications of international fragmentation which is driven by a foreign location advantage due to a low wage rate. Focusing on the cost-savings linkage between fragmentation and labor demand in the remaining...

Diese Arbeit will einen Beitrag zur Klärung des Befriffes Globalisierung leisten. Im Rahmen eines einfachen Modells werden zwei relevante Globalisierungsszenarien analysiert, wobei besonderes Augenmerk auf eine klare Trennung zwischen den Effizienz- und den Verteilungswirkungen gelegt wird. Wir...

International fragmentation, or outsourcing, is often referred to as a distinctly novel feature in today's global economy. First observed in the US-Mexican context, the phenomenon is increasingly catching policy makers' attention also in Europe. As barriers between east and west are...