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Abstract:
Brazil's trade liberalization between 1990 and 1993, and its partial reversal in 1995, are used to study how reduced inward trade barriers affect productivity. The production function of Brazilian manufacturers is estimated at the ISIC3 two-digit level under various alternatives, including an extension of Olley and Pakes' (1996) procedure. Firm-level productivity is inferred and then related to trade. Findings suggest that (1) foreign competition pressures firms to raise productivity markedly, whereas (2) the use of foreign inputs plays a minor role for productivity change. (3) The shutdown probability of inefficient firms rises with competition from abroad, thus contributing positively to aggregate productivity. Counterfactual simulations indicate that the competitive push (1) is an important source of immediate productivity change, while the elimination of inefficient firms (3) unfolds its impact slowly.

Abstract:
Production function estimation with micro-data shows that a persistent unobserved variable varies within firm or plant over time but resists treatment and may cause biases. This paper presents an estimation model of the firm under endogenous productivity change. The model implies that (i) the so-far untreated effect stems from firms' planned efficiency responses to the competitive environment and that (ii) a suitable proxy to productivity is investment interacted with a sector-level competition variable. An application to Brazilian manufacturing firm data shows that this proxy and multivariate extensions yield coefficient estimates with considerably less noise in bootstraps than alternative proxies, while reducing the difference to fixed-effects estimation and remedying commonly suspected biases. Whereas productivity change is measured consistently, scale economies are not identified when productivity and price are endogenous.

Abstract:
Using data on German and Swedish multinational enterprises (MNEs), this paper analyzes determinants of international location choice and the degree of substitutability of labor across locations. Countries with highly skilled labor forces strongly attract German but not necessarily Swedish MNEs. In MNEs from either country, affiliate employment tends to substitute for employment at the parent firm. At the margin, substitutability is the strongest with respect to affiliate employment in Western Europe. A 1% larger wage gap between Germany and locations in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is associated with 900 fewer jobs at German parents and 5,000 more jobs at affiliates in CEE. A 1% larger wage gap between Sweden and CEE is associated with 140 fewer jobs at Swedish parents and 260 more jobs at affiliates in CEE.

Multinational enterprises, location choice, multinominial choice, labor demand, translog cost function

Abstract:
Using data for German and Swedish multinational enterprises (MNEs), this paper assesses international employment patterns. It analyzes determinants of location choice and the degree of substitutability of labor across locations. Countries with highly skilled labor forces attract German MNEs, but we find no such evidence for Swedish MNEs. This is consistent with the hypothesis that German MNEs locate production stages intensive in high-skilled labor abroad. In MNEs from either country, affiliate employment tends to substitute for employment at the parent firm. On the margin, substitutability is the strongest with respect to affiliate employment in Western Europe. A one percent larger wage gap between Germany and locations in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is estimated to be associated with 900 fewer jobs in German parents and 5,000 more jobs in affiliates located in CEE. A one percent larger wage gap between Sweden and CEE is estimated to be associated with 140 fewer jobs in Swedish parents and 260 more jobs in affiliates located in CEE.

multinational enterprises, location choice, multinomial choice, labor demand, translog cost function

Abstract:
A rational-expectations equilibrium with positive demand for financial information does exist under fully revealing asset price - contrary to a wide-held conjecture. Generalizing the common additive signal-return model with CARA utility to the family of distributions with moment generating functions, this paper shows that individual investors endowed with an average portfolio demand information in equilibrium if they can adjust portfolio size. More information diminishes the expected excess return of a risky asset so that investors who only have a choice of portfolio composition or whose asset endowments strongly differ from the average portfolio are worse off. Under fully revealing price, information market equilibria both with and without information acquisition are Pareto efficient.

information, efficiency, financial markets, portfolio theory

Abstract:
Tracking individual workers across employers and industries after Brazil's trade liberalization in the 1990s shows that foreign import penetration and tariff reductions trigger worker displacements but that neither comparative-advantage industries nor exporters absorb displaced workers for years. There are significantly more displacements and fewer accessions in comparative-advantage industries and at exporters. These findings are robust to instrumenting trade barriers and export status with product demand at Brazil's export destinations and real exchange rate components. Worker effects are important predictors of labor turnover. Trade liberalization is associated with significantly more transitions to informal work status and self-employment. Output is reallocated to more productive firms but, given fast labor-productivity growth, this product reallocation is not accompanied by similar labor reallocation.

international trade, factor reallocation, labor demand and turnover, linked employer-employee data

Abstract:
Adding a stage of signal acquisition to the expected utility model shows that Bayesian updating results in a well defined law of demand for financial information when asset return distributions are conjugate priors to signals such as in the gamma-Poisson case. Signals have a positive marginal utility value that falls in their number if and only if investors are risk averse, asset markets large, and variance-mean ratios of asset returns high in fully revealing rational expectations equilibrium. Expected asset price increases in the number of signals so that expected excess return drops. The diminishing excess return prevents Bayesian investors from unbounded information demand even if signals are costless, unless the riskfree asset is removed. Signals mutually benefit homogeneous investors because revealing asset price permits updating so that a Pareto criterion judges competitive equilibrium as not sufficiently informative. However, asset price responses make incentives for signal acquisition dependent on portfolios so that welfare and distributional consequences become intricately linked when investors are heterogeneous.

Abstract:
We employ a comprehensive matched employer-employee data set for Brazil to analyze wage determinants and compare results to Abowd, Kramarz, Margolis and Troske (2001) for French and U.S. manufacturing. Returns to education and experience in Brazilian manufacturing exceed those of the other countries, while occupation differentials are similar. The gender differential in Brazilian and U.S. manufacturing coincides, and is considerably smaller than in France. Estimates are unaffected by selectivity of Brazilian workers into formal employment. The links between firm performance and wage components in Brazil resemble those of France. Worker characteristics have comparable explanatory power for manufacturing wage variability in the three countries but establishment-fixed effects explain relatively less of the Brazilian wage variation. Despite the inclusion of establishment effects, regressors predict at most sixty percent of wage variability in any Brazilian sector, suggesting that explanations for earnings variability ought to focus on worker characteristics, not establishment wage policies.

wage structure, wage inequality, matched employer-employee data, formal and informal employment, selectivity, Brazil

Abstract:
A novel linked employer-employee data set documents that expanding multinational enterprises retain more domestic jobs than competitors without foreign expansions. In contrast to prior research, a propensity score estimator allows enterprise performance to vary with foreign direct investment (FDI) and shows that the foreign expansion itself is the dominant explanatory factor for reduced worker separation rates. Bounding, concomitant variable tests, and robustness checks rule out competing hypotheses. The finding is consistent with the idea that, given global factor price differences, a prevention of enterprises from outward FDI would lead to more domestic worker separations. FDI raises domestic-worker retention more pronouncedly among highly educated workers and for expansions into distant locations.

multinational enterprises, international investment, demand for labor, worker layoffs, linked employer-employee data

Abstract:
Employment at multinational enterprises (MNEs) responds to wages at the extensive margin, when an MNE enters a foreign location, and at the intensive margin, when an MNE operates existing affiliates. We present an MNE model and conditions for parametric and nonparametric identification. Prior studies rarely found wages to affect MNE employment. We document a complementarity bias when the extensive margin is excluded and detect salient labor substitution at both margins for German manufacturing MNEs. With a one-percent increase in home wages, for instance, MNEs add 2,000 jobs in Eastern Europe at the extensive margin and 4,000 jobs overall; a converse one-percent drop in Eastern European wages removes 730 German MNE jobs.

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Abstract:
Multinational labor demand responds to wage differentials at the extensive margin, when a multinational enterprise (MNE) expands into foreign locations, and at the intensive margin, when an MNE operates existing affiliates across locations. We derive conditions for parametric and nonparametric identification of an MNE model to infer elasticities of labor substitution at both margins, controlling for location selectivity. Prior studies have rarely found foreign wages or operations to affect employment. Our strategy detects salient adjustments at the extensive margin for German MNEs. With every percentage increase in German wages, German MNEs allocate 2,000 manufacturing jobs to Eastern Europe at the extensive margin and 4,000 jobs overall.

multinational enterprise, location choice, sample selectivity, labor demand, translog cost function, nonparametric estimation

Abstract:
Linked employer-employee data for Brazil over a period of large-scale trade liberalization document two salient workforce changeovers. Within the traded-goods sector, there is a marked occupation downgrading and a simultaneous education upgrading by which employers fill expanding low-skill intensive occupations with increasingly educated jobholders. Between sectors, there is a labor demand shift towards the least and the most skilled, which can be traced back to relatively weaker declines of traded-goods industries that intensely use low-skilled labor and to relatively stronger expansions of nontraded-output industries that intensely use high-skilled labor. Whereas these observations are broadly consistent with predictions of Heckscher-Ohlin trade theory for a low-skill abundant economy, classic trade theory is a less useful guide to the observed reallocation pattern. Establishment-level regressions show that exporters exhibit significant employment downsizing. Workforce changeovers are neither achieved through worker reassignments to new tasks within employers nor are they brought about by reallocations across employers and traded-goods industries. Instead, trade-exposed industries shrink their workforces by dismissing less-schooled workers more frequently than more-schooled workers especially in skill-intensive occupations, while most displaced workers shift to nontraded-output industries or out of recorded employment. It remains an important task for research to analyze the impact of economic reform on worker separations, accessions and spell durations outside employment at the individual worker level.

Abstract:
We analyze the relationship between offshoring and the onshore workforce composition in German multinational enterprises (MNEs), using plant data that allow us to discern tasks, occupations, and workforce skills. Offshoring is associated with a statistically significant shift towards more non-routine and more interactive tasks, and with a shift towards highly educated workers. Moreover, the shift towards highly educated workers is in excess of what is implied by changes in either the task or the occupational composition. Whether offshored activities are located in low-income or high-income countries does not alter the direction of the relationship. We find offshoring to predict between 10 and 15 percent of observed changes in wage-bill shares of highly educated workers and measures of non-routine and interactive tasks.

demand for labor, linked employer-employee data, multinational enterprises, trade in tasks