To Örebro University

Offshoring continues to be an important dimension of firms' internationalization choices. However, offshoring also increases contract enforcement costs by inhibiting the coordination and monitoring of performance. Immigrant employees may reduce such costs through their specific knowledge of the employer, their country of birth and access to foreign networks. In this paper, we investigate the role of immigrant employees within firms on firm offshoring, employing rich administrative Swedish microlevel data that include specific information about the characteristics of employees, manufacturing firms and their bilateral offshoring. Our results support the hypothesis that immigrant employees increase offshoring by lowering contract enforcement costs. Hiring one additional immigrant employee is linked to a relatively larger increase in offshoring at the intensive than the extensive margin, on average. The association to offshoring is considerably stronger for skilled immigrant employees and for contract and R&D intensive offshoring. Instrumental variable estimations demonstrate qualitatively similar results, while a placebo test with randomized immigrant employment does not generate any link between immigrants and offshoring.

The aim of this article is twofold. First, we analyze whether the decision of where to import from is affected by firms' ex-ante characteristics. Second, we analyze how the origin of imports affects firms' productivity, export sales, and the number of export markets. Using extensive data on Swedish manufacturing firms from 2007 to 2020, we uncover several significant insights. Nearly 80% of the firms engage in international trade. The smallest firms operate exclusively as exporters, medium-sized firms as importers, and the largest firms engage in two-way trading. While most imports originate from high-wage countries, there has been a gradual shift to low-wage countries over time. Self-selection is evident, with highly productive firms importing from all sources, followed by firms that exclusively import from either low-wage or high-wage countries, and the lowest-productive firms not importing. By controlling for self-selection using the Event Study approach and difference-in-differences matching estimator, we find that large importing firms exhibit no significant differences in productivity and export sales in comparison to their non-importing counterparts. However, small importing firms show increased productivity growth, driven by high-wage imports. Both small and large firms importing from high- and low-wage countries tend to access more high-wage export markets than non-importers.

Så länge kommuner har funnits har de även haft bolag och ständigt har detta varit ett ämne för debatt, där farhågor för demokratin och konkurrens lyfts. I en nyligen publicerad rapport studerar vi framväxten av kommunala bolag och granskar produktivitetsutvecklingen i dessa, som enligt beslutsfattare är ett av de viktigaste motiven till verksamhet i bolagsform.

In this paper, we provide novel evidence on the adjustment of multinational enterprises (MNEs) to corrupt environments. We examine if the corruption barrier to entry is reduced by corruption experience (i.e., previous investment in a corrupt system) using a rich enterprise data set on Swedish manufacturers' activities in the 1997-2015 period. A mixed logit model, which accounts for enterprise-specific market substitution patterns, is used to ensure the accuracy of estimates. Our findings show that a strong deterrent effect of corruption is counteracted by corruption experience, which implies that MNEs learn to adjust to reduce corruption entry costs. Multinational enterprises that acquire corruption experience gain a competitive advantage over other enterprises.

Svenska kommuner äger och bedriver sedan länge verksamhet i bolagsform, men står ut i internationell jämförelse genom det stora antalet kommunala bolag och storleken på dessa. Antalet bolag fortsätter dessutom att öka och spelar en viktig roll i kommunsektorns utveckling och de välfärdstjänster som sektorn tillhandahåller. Vad kan förklara denna utveckling? Baserat på data för perioden 2000-2020 finner vi att befolkningststorleken är positivt korrelerad med antalet bolag. Det tenderar alltså att vara så att stora kommuner har fler bolag än små kommuner, men befolkningsstorleken förklarar däremot inte varför bolagen i en genomsnittlig kommun växer i omfång i termer av antal anställda per invånare. Vidare finns det samband som indikerar att de kommunala bolagen i en genomsnittlig kommun blir fler och växer i termer av andel sysselsatta när skatteunderlaget ökar och den lokala arbetslösheten stiger. Vad gäller de strukturella mönstren tycks det existera lokala kluster av geografiskt närliggande kommuner med många kommunala bolag. Detta kan tyda på att kommuner imiterar varandra. När vi studerar produktiviteten i de enskilda bolagen så finner vi att de presterar ungefär lika bra som sina privata motsvarigheter. Produktivitetsutvecklingen i ett genomsnittligt kommunalt bolag skiljer sig i de flesta fall inte från ett privat bolag i samma bransch, med undantag för en bransch där den är lägre och en annan bransch där den är högre.

Många insatser syftar till att öka sannolikheten att barn och ungdomar klarar av skolan. Det kan handla om olika typer av extra stöd i skolan, läxhjälp eller insatser för att förbättra den mentala hälsan. Men vad är egentligen värdet av dessa insatser? I denna artikel beräknar vi nettonuvärdet av att en individ klarar behörigheten till ett nationellt gymnasieprogram. Vi visar även på hur detta kan användas för att utvärdera olika typer av tidiga insatser. 

Some long-term societal benefits of early psychosocial interventions supporting children and youth at various developmental risks can be estimated with school results as a mediatory. In this paper we develop causal education-earnings links for educational achievement thresholds at the end of the nine-year compulsory school (CS) and the three-year upper secondary school (USS) in Sweden. Gross earnings are calculated with age profiles estimated on micro-level register data for the whole population. We also estimate the indirect costs of education (forgone earnings) with this data and find that they can be ignored. For the base case, we calculate the expected net present value of meeting minimum requirements for transition from CS to a national USS-program to €112,000 (SEK 1.1 million) and for graduation from such a program to €163,000 (SEK 1.6 million).

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.

Offshoring provides firms with opportunities for internationalization and growth. But, offshoring comes at a cost, especially in presence of inadequate information and trust friction. Immigrant employees could reduce such offshoring transaction costs through their knowledge of former home countries and via access to foreign networks. This is the first firm-level study on migration and offshoring. In estimating a firm-level gravity model on new employer-employee data for approximately 12,000 Swedish firms during the time period 1998-2007, we are able to show that immigrant employees have a significant and positive impact on offshoring. Hiring one additional foreign-born worker can spur offshoring with up to three percent on average, and even more to low-income countries. The findings of this study could have potentially important policy implications. In addition to showing that immigrants could provide options for countries that aim to promote offshoring, the results introduce a completely new channel through which migration may promote development, through offshoring. This could encourage governments of developed nations to enhance their emphasis on migration as a tool for supporting private sector development in emerging economies.

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.