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Trade in Tasks

Trade in Tasks. Rainer Lanz, Sébastien Miroudot, Hildegunn Kyvik Nordås OECD TAD/TSD. Working Party on International Trade in Goods and Trade in Services Statistics (8 November). Overview. Trade in tasks: another turn in the virtous cycle of expanding markets and deepening division of labour

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Trade in Tasks

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  1. Trade in Tasks Rainer Lanz, Sébastien Miroudot, Hildegunn Kyvik NordåsOECD TAD/TSD Working Party on International Trade in Goods and Trade in Services Statistics (8 November)

  2. Overview • Trade in tasks: another turn in the virtous cycle of expanding markets and deepening division of labour • Measuring trade in task – a difficult task • The driving forces: Taylorism vs. Toyotaism? • Empirical analysis

  3. Trade in tasks – deepening division of labour

  4. How can trade in tasks be measured? Alternative 1: outsourcing of jobs Alternative 2: tasks embodied in traded goods and services Map tasks by occupation Map employment by occupation and sector Yields task by sector Map production by sector to goods and services produced Yields traded tasks – does not distinguish embodied and disembodied tasks. • Map tasks by occupation • Identify the occupations where tradable tasks are the most important • Calculate the share in total employment of these occupations

  5. Alternative 2: the task content of output Intensity of task h in sector s Content of task h in total output

  6. Cluster analysis • Getting information • Making decisions and solving problems • Updating and using relevant knowledge • Organizing and prioritizing work • Communicating with supervisors • Establishing and maintaining interpersonal relationships

  7. Task content of occupations Chef Fast food cook

  8. Task content of output by cluster

  9. Partial correlations – output share of task clusters and imports of goods and services

  10. Trade and the composition of tasks • Only small changes in the task content of output between 2000 and 2008 • Task contents of exports and output are similar • Import penetration of services is complementary to the tasks ‘Information processing’ and ‘getting information and communicating’ • Limited impact of import penetration on the task allocation within industries • Import penetration in capital-intensive industries shift tasks directly related to production to more information-based activities

  11. Some reflections • Fragmentation of production is not the same as fragmentation of jobs • Functions that are outsourced or offshored become new industries manned by multitask workers in a broad range of occupations and skill levels • Insights from the transaction cost based theory of the firm: The boundary of the firm is defined by balancing transaction costs, coordination costs and incentives. • Taylorism versus toyotism?

  12. Caveats • Variation in our data is due to changes in employment by occupation. • Time series of task by occupation would ideally be needed • Task content by occupation is assumed to be the same across countries – reasonable? • More detailed analysis needed (services trade by services category and source, firm-level data by task)

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