Offshoring in the Global Economy: Microeconomic Structure and Macroeconomic Implications

摘要

While global international trade has increased steadily since World War II, its composition has changed over time. The last several decades have witnessed a significant growth in offshoring- international trade in intermediate goods due to the separation of the production process into different stages in different countries. Contemporaneously, the academic literature in trade theory has also evolved in multiple ways. First, trade theorists have extended classical theories and de-veloped new frameworks to consider more complicated trade patterns like offshoring. Second, the proliferation of quality microdata has allowed researchers to test these theories and discover new facts. Robert Feenstra has been at the frontier of the field during this time and he reviewed these developments in his Ohlin Lectures in 2008, the origin of this book. In the book he skillfully connects theory and empirics, microeconomic foundations (part I) and macroeconomic implications (part II), revealing the full depth and breadth of his expertise.