We observe a substantial increase in foreign ownership in Sweden in the 1990s. Did that have any effect on relative demand for skilled labor? Has technology transfers-often associated with inward FDI-led to an increased demand for skills due to skilled-biased technical change? Are there any grounds for the concerns in the public Swedish debate that more skilled activities have been moved to other countries where the headquarters are located? Estimating relative labor demand at the firm level and using propensity score matching with difference-in-difference estimation, we obtain support for that relative demand for skilled labor tend to rise in non-multinationals (non-MNEs)-but not in multinationals (MNEs)-that become foreign-owned. Other interesting findings are that larger presence of foreign MNEs in an industry appears to have a positive impact on the relative demand for skills in Swedish MNEs within the same industry and that the elasticity of substitution between skilled and less-skilled labor seems to be lower in MNEs than in non-MNEs.
Reduced trade barriers and lower costs of transportation and information have meant that a growing part of the economy has been exposed to international trade. In particular, this is the case in the service sector. We divide the service sector into a tradable and a non-tradable part using an approach to identify tradable industries utilizing a measure of regional concentration of production. We examine whether the probability of displacement is higher and income losses after displacement greater for workers in tradable services and manufacturing (tradable) than in non-tradable services. We also analyze whether the probability of re-employment is higher for workers displaced from tradable services and manufacturing than from non-tradable services. We find that in the 2000s the probability of displacement is relatively high in tradable services in comparison to non-tradable services and manufacturing. On the other hand, the probability of re-employment is higher for those displaced from tradable services. The largest income losses are found for those who had been displaced from manufacturing. Interestingly, the income losses of those displaced from manufacturing seems mainly to be due to longer spells of non-employment, whereas for those displaced in tradable services lower wages in their new jobs compared to their pre-displacement jobs appears to play a larger role.
Minskade handelshinder och lägre kostnader för transporter och information har inneburit att en växande del av ekonomin har exponerats för internationell handel. I denna artikel delar vi in ekonomin i tre delar – tillverkningsindustri, exponerad och icke-exponerad tjänstesektor – och jämför kostnaderna av att bli av med jobbet i dessa. Kostnaderna kan exempelvis bestå av perioder av arbetslöshet eller lägre lön i det nya arbetet jämfört med i det gamla. Vi finner att dessa kostnader är högre i branscher som är exponerade för internationell handel, framför allt för dem som har friställts inom tillverkningsindustrin.
Using a matching approach, we compare the productivity trajectories of future export-entrants and matched nonentrants. Future exporters have higher productivity than do nonentrants before entry into international markets, which indicates self-selection into exports. More interestingly, we also observe a productivity increase among export-entrants relative to nonentrants before export entry. This might be explained by higher investments in physical capital prior to export entry. We find no evidence that the productivity gap between export-entrants and nonentrants continues to grow after export entry. Our results suggest that learning to export occurs but that learning by exporting does not. In contrast to previous studies on Swedish manufacturing, we focus particularly on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Using Swedish microdata, we find no evidence for the concerns circulating in the public debate that foreign acquisitions lead to reductions in both R&D expenditures and high-skilled activities in targeted domestic firms for either MNEs or non-MNEs. Previous studies have only focused on larger firms. In this paper, we are able to study the impact on smaller firms (fewer than 50 employees), which is important because 90% of the firms acquired meet this criterion. For this group of firms, there is no information on R&D, but by using the register of educational attainment, we obtain data on the share of high skilled labor in all Swedish firms irrespective of size. Interestingly, we find that among smaller firms, foreign enterprises tend to acquire high-productive, skill-intensive firms (cherry-picking). After the acquisitions, skill upgrading appears in acquired smaller, non-MNE firms, particularly in the service sector.
De globala värdekedjornas ökade betydelse och en tilltagande fragmentering av produktionsprocesserna har påverkat näringslivets specialisering i Sverige, såväl på nationell som på regional nivå. Detta är en utveckling som man kan lägga märke till inom de multinationella företagen. I denna artikel diskuteras vilka specialiseringsmönster som observeras inom dessa företag och i vad mån ökad funktionell specialisering och expansion utomlands bidragit till ökade eko-nomiska skillnader mellan regioner.
To establish in which service industries there is international trade (or it may potentially exist), we calculate locational Ginis for different industries. The basic idea is that from this measure of regional concentration of different activities within a country we can identify industries where there appears to be regional trade, and hence also a potential for international trade. Based on our method, we find that: (i) the number of employed in tradable service appears to be at least as large as in the manufacturing sector, (ii) tradable service is much more skill intensive than manufacturing, and (iii) lately, the employment in tradable service has increased substantially. We argue that the last mentioned result is consistent with the substantial growth of skilled labour in Sweden since the mid-1990s (Rybczynski effect) and factors leading to increased relative demand for skilled labour. Particularly, increased competition from and offshoring to low-wage countries seem recently to have had a considerable impact on the creation of skilled jobs and the displacement of less skilled jobs in the tradable sector in Sweden. Furthermore, we apply a similar method as for industries to identify tradable occupations. Using our classification of tradable industries and tradable occupations in a Mincer type wage equation, we find that workers in such industries and occupations receive a wage premia of 1213 per cent.
We examine the relationship between relative demands for skills, non-routine, and non-offshorable tasks in Swedish MNE parents (onshore) and their employment shares in affiliates abroad (offshore). Our estimations suggest that increased employment shares in affiliates abroad (offshore) result in higher relative demand for skills and larger shares of non-routine tasks performed by employed that are highly educated in the parents at home (onshore). However, we do not find any evidence for that the share of non-offshorable tasks rises in the parents of Swedish MNEs when employment shares increase in their affiliates overseas. Furthermore, we estimate the relationships between absolute employment onshore (skilled and less-skilled labour) and employment in affiliates offshore (high- and low-income countries). Increased employment in affiliates in low-income countries relates negatively to the employment of less-skilled workers in manufacturing MNE parents (substitute), whereas increased employment in affiliates in high-income countries correlates positively with the employment of skilled workers in service MNE parents (complement).
Den svenska utrikeshandeln domineras av varuhandeln. Endast runt 30 procent av den totala exporten utgörs av export av tjänster, medan tjänstesektorns andel av BNP eller av den totala sysselsättningen är avsevärt större än tillverkningsindustrins. Tjänsteexporten har emellertid på senare år vuxit snabbare än varuexporten och det finns, som redogörs för i uppsatsen, anledning att hävda att tjänstehandelns betydelse i förhållande till varuhandeln underskattas. I uppsatsen analyseras hur det internationella specialiseringsmönstret ser ut inom den svenska tjänstesektorn och dessutom diskuteras det ökade samspelet mellan varu- ochtjänsteproducerande sektorer. Slutligen argumenteras för att tjänstehandeln behöver belysas bättre i den ekonomiska statistiken.
Enligt handelsminister Ewa Björling är handels- och investeringsfrämjande åtgärder avgörande för att säkra Sveriges position som en framgångsrik handelsnation och en viktig spelare på den globala marknaden. Hon menar också att i tider av ekonomisk oro, när den globala handeln minskar, blir handels- och investeringsfrämjandet än mer angeläget (Ds 2009:35, s 7–8). I denna artikel diskuteras vilka samhällsekonomiska motiv som kan ligga bakom exportfrämjande åtgärder och huruvida det finns empiriskt stöd för sådana. Vår slutsats är att även om det finns både teoretiska argument och empiriska belägg för att offentligt finansierade satsningar på exportfrämjande åtgärder har effekt, överskattas sannolikt dessa insatsers betydelse.
Näringslivets satsningar på forskning och utveckling (FoU) i Sverige har i jämförelse med andra länder under lång tid varit betydande. FoU ökar tillgången på ny kunskap och teknologi i ett land och leder till tillväxt samt medför ökad efterfrågan på kvalificerad arbetskraft. En väsentlig fråga är därför i vad mån sådana aktiviteter även fortsättningsvis kommer att vara lokaliserade till Sverige. De analyser som diskuteras i artikeln verkar inte ge något stöd för den oro som framförts i debatten att den FoU som utförs i multinationella koncerner (svenska multinationella och utlandsägda) skulle vara på väg att flytta från Sverige.
Under efterkrigstiden har den svenska ekonomin genomgått en betydande strukturomvandling. Den har bidragit till en ansenlig tillväxt i BNP per capita, men har också inneburit kostnader för de individer som på grund av dessa omställningar har blivit av med sina jobb. I denna artikel beskrivs den strukturomvandling som skett framför allt sedan 1990-talet och vilka kostnader den har inneburit på individnivå. Slutligen diskuteras om det omställningssystem som finns för att hantera dessa är ändamålsenligt.
The paper evaluates the impact of technology together with resource endowments, factor prices and economies of scale on international competitiveness in OECD countries. Knowledge capital stocks are obtained by cumulating R&D expenditure. Results show that competitiveness is determined not only by the R&D activity of the representative firm, but also by total R&D in the domestic industry as well as economywide stocks of knowledge, indicating the presence of local externalities. Competitiveness is also affected by factor prices and resource endowments as well as scale economies and learning by doing. Further results point to the importance of economies of scale in R&D internal to the firm, of the degree of openness for the capacity to utilize global spillovers and of investment for introduction of embodied technical progress. Finally, the R&D impact is higher in high- and medium- than in low-tech industries.
The conclusions are that a traditional factor proportions model seems neither theoretically nor empirically to explaing IIT. However, a relaxation of the assumption of homogeneous products in an industry gives rise to several implications for IIT. Industry characteristics such as an industry’s factor intensity and the degree of product differentiation play important roles. The more extreme an industry is with regard to factor intensity, i.e., if an industry is very capital or very labor intensive, the smaller IIT is in that industry. The more differentiated the products, the less the elasticity of substitution in demand between different products in an industry, the larger the IIT. In order to test the latter, a new measure of product differentiation closely related to the concept in the theoretical model is developed. Furthermore, similarity in relative factor endowments in the trading countries and transaction costs - tariffs and transport costs - influence IIT. The more similar the relative factor endowments, the larger the IIT. The less the transaction costs, the greater the IIT.
The rate of change in the share of skilled labor has increased steadily over the past 35 years in Swedish manufacturing. A closer inspection of the period after 1970 indicates that, while relative supply changes of skilled labor seem to have been the main driving force behind the growing skill shares in manufacturing industries over the period 1970-85, an acceleration in the relative demand for skills appears to have propelled higher skill shares during the late 1980s and at the beginning of the 1990s. Consistent with such a development is the finding of an increasing degree of complementarity between knowledge capital and skilled labor, and that Swedish manufacturing firms, in recent years, have invested heavily in R and D. There is also some support for the belief that intensified competition from the South has increased the relative demand for skilled labor. However, the impact appears to be small and essentially driven by the textile industry.
This paper studies the link between production transfer within Swedish-headquartered multinational enterprises (MNEs) in the manufacturing industry and skill upgrading in their parent companies in the 1990s. The analysis distinguishes between horizontal and vertical foreign direct investment (FDI). The increased employment share in the affiliates in non-OECD countries (vertical FDI) has a non-trivial, significantly positive effect on the share of skilled labor in the Swedish parents. On the other hand, the parents’ skill upgrading is unrelated to employment changes in their affiliates in other OECD countries (horizontal FDI). This is consistent with implications of the newly developed horizontal MNE models.
Rapporten visar att multinationella företag spelar en betydelsefull roll för globaliseringen av svenskt näringsliv, såväl nationellt som regionalt. De multinationella företagens fragmentering, funktionella specialisering och offshoring leder till effektivitetsvinster och tillväxt men också till regionala skillnader.
The report analyzes factors that affect the localization of research and development (R&D) within Swedish-owned multinational enterprises in different countries (including Sweden). It also aims to investigate how Sweden is positioned with regard to these factors in an international perspective.
Rapporten beskriver det svenska näringslivets forskning och utveckling (FoU) ur ett internationellt, nationellt och regionalt perspektiv. Några frågeställningar som behandlas är: Vilka faktorer har betydelse för svenska multinationella koncerners lokalisering av FoU? Har ökat utlandsägandet i svenskt näringsliv inneburit att FoU och annan kvalificerad verksamhet flyttat utomlands? Vad bestämmer den regionala lokaliseringen av FoU? Vad krävs i framtiden för att Sverige ska fortsätta vara en framstående forskningsnation?
Utgifterna för forskning och utveckling (FoU) inom det svenska näringslivet är starkt koncentrerat till ett fåtal regioner och koncerner. I rapporten beskrivs i vilka branscher och regioner det sker mest FoU och hur utvecklingen har sett ut över tid. Dessutom analyseras vilka faktorer som är betydelsefulla för den regionala lokaliseringen (funktionella arbetsmarknadsregioner, FA-regioner).
Does government spending have a positive or negative effect on economic growth? The results of earlier empirical studies give mixed results. In this study we suggest a new method for testing the effect of different kinds of government expenditure on productivity growth in the private sector. The focus on productivity in the private sector and the use of disaggregated data makes it possible to avoid or mitigate a number of methodological problems.
The major conclusions, which are quite robust, are that government transfers, consumption and total outlays have consistently negative effects, while educational expenditure has a positive effect, and government investment has no effect on private productivity growth.
The impact is also found to work solely through total factor productivity and not via the marginal productivity of labor and capital.
In this study we test whether catching up, the hypothesis that there is technological spillover from leaders to followers, is still important among industrialized countries. Since the USA is no longer the technological leader in many industries and since catching up, if it still exists, may not operate uniformly across different industries, a disaggregated study is more appropriate. A testable model is developed and a number of tests for the existence of catching up are performed. A major improvement on previous tests is that the level of technology is measured in terms of total factor productivity. The two major conclusions, which are quite robust, are that after 1970 there is no catching-up effect left in the tradables sector, while catching up is found for industries in the nontradables sector.
What Makes a Country Socially Capable of Catching Up? - In this study, the authors test whether social capability promotes catching up, the hypothesis that there is technological spillover from leaders to followers. A simple model that captures the hypothesized interaction is presented and tested on an extended sample of countries. The stock of human capital and the degree of integration into the world economy are used to measure social capability. Both measures are important in determining the degree to which the catching-up potential is realized. The authors also find an independent effect of increased trade intensity and trade regime on productivity growth.
Intra-industry trade, i.e. the simultaneous imports and exports of the same statistical product group, has become an increasingly important part of world trade, in particular in the exchange of goods among developed countries (for a survey of findings see Tharakan, 1983). This fact has initiated empirical research on the causes of intra-industry trade. Attempts to explain differences in the share of intra-industry trade of total trade among different industries or product groups in terms of characteristics of the product or the market have been made, e.g. for the UK by Greenaway and Milner (1984), for the US by Toh (1982) and Bergstrand (1983), and for a sample of developed economies by Finger and De Rosa (1979), Loertscher and Wolter (1980) and Caves (1981). The explanatory variables used in these studies are generally assumed to capture some aspect of the concept of product differentiation. They include measures based on the statistical classification itself (e.g. subdivisions of the SITC or the BTN), as well as R&D costs, advertising expenditures, product age and measures of concentration and economies of scale. The basic hypothesis is that the higher the degree of product differentiation in an industry, the more intra-industry trade there will be.
We study the link between exports and productivity at the firm level. Like in previous studies we get support for the hypothesis that more productive firms self-select into the export market. In addition, and contrary to many of the former studies, we also obtain evidence that exporting further increases firm productivity. Exporting firms appear to have significantly higher productivity than nonexporting. Moreover, exporters—mainly firms that increase their export intensities—have higher output growth than nonexporters. Reallocation of resources between firms may then have contributed to overall manufacturing productivity growth. Hence, we try to quantify the importance of reallocation.