Abstract
The paper investigates the relationship between services trade performance and employment characteristics in Italian firms. Our analysis is at the micro level and descriptive in nature. We merge micro data on services trade transactions with employment and wage variables at the level of the firm. We find that firms engaged in services trade tend to employ a larger share of managers and white collars and to pay higher average wages. They also exhibit systematically smaller shares of blue collars in their employment structure. These patterns hold qualitatively across all main sectors of firms' affiliation and across sectors of traded services. We find a strong and positive association between services exports and/or imports and total employment. Regression analysis confirms this last finding and shows it is robust to controlling for various confounding heterogeneity.
Highlights
The paper investigates the relationship between services trade performance and employment characteristics in Italian firms
A number of studies focused on the impact of various dimensions of services trade on the labour market, in terms of employment and wages for the various categories of workers involved
The analysis presented in this paper contributes to this research strand by investigating the relationship between services trade performance and employment characteristics in Italian firms
Summary
It is becoming more and more evident that services play a key role in international trade. Related empirical country case studies analyzing firm level data tend to point to a systematically positive impact of services imports on downstream employment, in particular on high skill labour demand. These works include Crinò (2010) for the US case, Michel & Rycx (2012) for Belgium, Andersson et al (2016) for Sweden, Eppinger (2019) for Germany and Ariu et al (2019b) for Finland.
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