1. 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

2. 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?

3. 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

4. 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?

5. 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)

6. 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?