Outsourcing in East Asia and its impact on the Japanese and Korean Labour Markets

This study describes the changing patterns of intermediate goods trade and foreign direct investment(FDI) in East Asia and investigates the impacts of international outsourcing on the Japanese and theKorean labour markets. The main findings of the paper are as follows. First, intra-regional trade in EastAsia grew remarkably during the period 1990-2003. While overall trade with the rest of the world roughlydoubled in this period, intra-regional trade in East Asia more than tripled. Second, the main factor behindincreased intra-regional trade in East Asia was the trade in intermediate goods through outsourcing and theinternational fragmentation of production. Third, reflecting the fact that outsourcing to Asia (particularly toChina) has a negative impact on the demand for workers with lower education and a positive impact on thedemand for workers with higher education, relative wage shares of workers by educational attainment havechanged substantially both in Japan and Korea. Fourth, our empirical analysis provides evidence of labourdemand shift towards skilled labour in Japanese manufacturing as a result of outsourcing. For Korea,although the overall effects of outsourcing have been insignificant in Korea partly because a substantialpart of Korean outsourcing remained directed towards Japan, our results imply that labour demand wouldshift away from less-skilled workers towards more-skilled workers if outsourcing to China increased andoutsourcing to Japan decreased in the future.