Manufacturing employment, trade and structural change

Grant description:

The political resonance of the decline in U.S. manufacturing employment has reached a fever pitch in recent years, with calls for a return of manufacturing jobs. But how feasible is such a goal in light of structural changes in the U.S. economy, such as technological growth? This project will try to answer this question by developing a model that will decompose the total decline in manufacturing into decline due to structural change and decline due to increased international trade. It also aims to put the decline of manufacturing in a global perspective. It proposes to study cross-country patterns of structural change by studying 25 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, offering a new look at the current controversy of trade versus technology in employment.