Measuring and understanding trade in service tasks
Chiquiar, Daniel ; Tobal, Martin ; Yslas, Renato
2019
158
1
March
169-190
trade structure ; service sector ; labour market ; technological change ; digitalisation ; international relocation of industry
Trade
https://doi.org/10.1111/ilr.12133
English
Bibliogr.
"The revolution in information and communications technologies has put service tasks with strong tradability characteristics at high risk of being offshored. This article reviews studies proposing indicators of service tradability, exploring the labour market implications of service offshoring and developing theories to rationalize the facts. It suggests that both skill intensity and tradability are determinants of wage and employment effects. Nonetheless, the lack of widely accepted definitions of tradability, the absence of high‐quality data on service trade flows and the difficulty of measuring import competition at higher disaggregation levels pose difficulties in achieving further progress, pointing to areas for future research."
Digital;Paper
The ETUI is co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the ETUI.