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Based on firm-level data over the period 1997-2002 for the Swedish manufacturing sector the objective of this paper is to analyze relative labor demand effects due to offshoring, separating between materials and services offshoring and also geographical location of trade partner. Overall, our results give no support to the fears that offshoring of materials or services lead to out-location of high-skilled activity in Swedish firms. Rather, this paper finds evidence that the aggregate effects from offshoring lead to increasing relative demand of high-skilled labor, mainly due to services offshoring to middle income countries.

This study analyzes the difference between foreign and domestic ownership of firms with respect to productivity. Recent literature has shown that it is important to study the counter-factual outcome, i.e. what would the outcome be had the domestic firm never been acquired? The analysis is based on a panel of Swedish firm level data. In order to isolate the casual effects due to a takeover a propensity score matching estimator is applied to compare similar treated and untreated firms. The difference-in-difference estimations show that there is a positive effect of foreign acquisition on productivity. Foreign acquisitions increase the productivity in the acquired Swedish firms by between 3 and 11% depending on the estimator chosen. Moreover, this productivity difference does not occur immediately but starts between 1-5 years post acquisition.Multinational firms, Foreign acquisitions, Productivity, Matching, Difference-in-difference,

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the causal effect of foreign acquisition on R&D intensity in targeted domestic firms. We are able to distinguish domestic multinationals and non-multinationals, which allows us to investigate the fear that the change in ownership of domestic to foreign multinationals leads to a reduction in R&D activity in the country, as headquarter activities are relocated to the new owner's home country. We use unique and rich firm level data for the Swedish manufacturing sector and different micro-econometric estimation strategies in order to control for the potential endogeneity of the acquisition dummy. Overall, our results give no support to the fears that foreign acquisition of domestic firms lead to a brain drain of R&D activity in Swedish MNEs. Rather, this paper finds robust evidence that foreign acquisitions lead to increasing R&D intensity in acquired domestic MNEs and non-MNEs. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may

The objective of this paper was to analyse effects on firm–level relative demand for skilled labour due to imports of intermediates (offshoring) and exports of intermediates (inshoring). The study is based on a data set of Swedish manufacturing firms, 1997–2002, using trade flows in intermediate goods and services, respectively. Descriptive data show that goods inshoring is much larger than goods offshoring, while the reverse is true for services. There is, however, a strong increase in services inshoring over the study period. Controlling for potential endogeneity in offshoring and inshoring, our results indicate that there is a positive effect of services offshoring on the skill composition of workers in Swedish firms, while no such causality can be established from inshoring.