International Trade, Offshoring and Heterogeneous Firms

Richard Baldwin and Toshihiro Okubo

No 16660, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Recent trade models determine the equilibrium distribution of firm-level efficiency endogenously and show that freer trade shifts the distribution towards higher average productivity due to entry and exit of firms. These models ignore the possibility that freer trade also alters the firm-size distribution via international firm migration (offshoring); firms must, by assumption, produce in their 'birth nation.' We show that when firms are allowed to switch locations, new productivity effects arise. Freer trade induces the most efficient small-nation firms to move to the large nation. The big country gets an 'extra helping' of the most efficient firms while the small nation's firm-size distribution is truncated on both ends. This reinforces the big-nation productivity gain while reducing or even reversing the small-nation productivity gain. The small nation is nevertheless better off allowing firm migration.

JEL-codes: F1 F12 F2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec and nep-int
Note: ITI
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Published as Richard E. Baldwin & Toshihiro Okubo, 2014. "International Trade, Offshoring and Heterogeneous Firms," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(1), pages 59-72, 02.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w16660.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: International Trade, Offshoring and Heterogeneous Firms (2014)
Working Paper: International Trade, Offshoring and Heterogeneous Firms (2012)
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:nbr:nberwo:16660

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w16660

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().