【主题】Technology and Production Fragmentation: Domestic versus Foreign Sourcing
【报告人】Teresa C. Fort，现任美国达特茅斯大学塔克商学院（Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth）助理教授，2012年获得美国马里兰大学经济学博士，曾任职于美国人口普查局，主要研究领域是国际贸易和产业组织，研究成果发表于IMF Economic Review 等，同时兼任 Canadian Journal of Economics, European Economic Review, Journal of International Economics等国际著名期刊的匿名审稿人。
【时间】2014年3月12日（星期三）下午3:30-5:00
【论文摘要】This paper provides direct empirical evidence about how technology affects firms' global sourcing decisions. Using new data on U.S. firms' decisions to contract for manufacturing services from domestic or foreign suppliers, I estimate a large differential impact of firm communication technology on the probability of fragmentation across industries. The effect of firm technology is more than two standard deviations higher in industries whose production specifications are easier to codify in
an electronic format, relative to industries in which they are not. The data also show that high technology firms and industries are more likely to source from high human capital countries, and that the differential impact of technology across industries is strongly increasing in country human capital. The systematic variation in the effect of firm technology across industries and countries is an important element in understanding how technology affects global sourcing patterns, the role of firm-level comparative advantage in offshoring, and the ramifications of production fragmentation on different types of firms and workers.
