Discussion: Emmanuel Milet Winners and Losers of Service Offshoring: Micro Level Evidence Andrea Ariu J. Bradford Jensen Katariina Nilsson Hakkala Saara Tamminen Discussion: Emmanuel Milet

Motivation for the paper Trade in services is growing (still small, but growing fast) Fears that highly educated workers are going to lose their jobs What do the data say? Not much going on so far Impacts are either small or non-significant Most studies at the industry level What about firm response?

Results of the paper Uses data from Finland Firms that start importing services: Increase their sales More profitable Employ less low-education workers: Less blue-collar service workers, more managers Firms that continue importing services Their total assets Employ less middle- and low-education workers

How to improve the paper: Pick a story: Skill-composition? Occupation composition? Separation rate? Wages? What is the mechanism that is being tested? Cost-shifter in the labor demand? Specialization on some tasks within firm?

How to improve the paper: On the empirical side: Clusters at the industry*year level Is the distinction between starters and non-starters that relevant? What about stoppers? How different is your measure of Narrow Service offshoring with what already exists? When estimating labor demands: estimate jointly. When estimating labor shares: problem of non-normality of the errors (inference is wrong)

How to improve the paper: Random stuff: You don’t know if it’s actually offshoring or not The title is a bit strong: You don’t know what happens to those workers Do you have information on firm ownership? Did you try dropping the largest firms Where do firms import from? Other OECD countries? Eastern Europe? Low-wage countries?