The Impact of Outsourcing on the Japanese and South Korean Labor Markets: International Outsourcing of Intermediate Inputs and Assembly in East Asia

Sanghoon Ahn, Kyoji Fukao, 京司 深尾, キョウジ フカオ, Keiko Ito, 恵子 伊藤 and ケイコ イトウ

No 2008-27, CEI Working Paper Series from Center for Economic Institutions, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University

Abstract: Applying a common empirical approach to comparable industry-level data on production, trade, and labor markets for Japan and South Korea, this paper aims to investigate the impacts of outsourcing on different sectors of the labor market focusing on differences in educational attainment. While outsourcing measures used in previous studies only take account of the outsourcing of intermediate inputs, this paper, utilizing the Asian International Input-Output Tables, incorporates the outsourcing of assembly. The econometric results indicate that outsourcing to Asia (particularly to China) has a negative impact on the demand for workers with lower education and a positive impact on the demand for workers with higher education both in Japan and Korea. Moreover, the international outsourcing of assembly has a significant impact on skill upgrading, particularly in the Korean electrical machinery sector.

Keywords: Outsourcing; labor demand; skill upgrading; Japan; Korea; manufacturing; Asian International Input-Output Tables (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F14 F16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2009-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-sea
Note: October, 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://hermes-ir.lib.hit-u.ac.jp/hermes/ir/re/29302/WP2008-27.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: The Impact of Outsourcing on the Japanese and South Korean Labor Markets: International Outsourcing of Intermediate Inputs and Assembly in East Asia (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hit:hitcei:2008-27

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEI Working Paper Series from Center for Economic Institutions, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Reiko Suzuki ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).