| Research
Working Groups
International
Trade and Deindustrialization
Will Milberg,
milbergw@newschool.edu
Markus Schneider, m_schneider@speedymail.org
Rudiger von Arnim, vonR605@newschool.edu
 The
International Trade and Deindustrialization Research Working Group
will take up a number of issues related to the U.S. performance
in international trade and its implications for U.S. employment
and industrial health. The project on deindustrialization will use
factor content analysis to measure the role of international trade
on the manufacturing share of U.S. employment. The role of trade
in deindustrialization of OECD countries has been debated heavily
in the past ten years, with one group arguing that deindustrialization
is a natural and healthy outcome for countries in the same way that
the move from agriculture to industry was a century ago. Another
group has identified imports from low-wage countries as a large
and significant factor in deindustrialization. This project will
look at the latest disaggregated data for the U.S. in an effort
to better understand the role of trade in the determination of the
composition of U.S. output and employment.
The second project
focuses on outsourcing and especially service sector outsourcing
in the U.S. The aim is to capture the employment and downstream
trade effects of the recent explosion in trade in intermediate goods
and services. In the first part of the project we will estimate
the effects of outsourcing on U.S. income distribution, in particular
on profit and wage rates. In the second part of the project we will
estimate demand for intermediate services imports and exports, in
an effort to assess how different the recent experience is from
the longer-term past experience, and to see if the services imports
are linked in any significant way to market access abroad and thus
to an expansion of U.S. exports.
The Trade and
Deindustrialization Working Group will also be hosting the New York
Apparel Industry Study Group, and interdisciplinary study group,
drawing on resources at the Graduate Faculty, Parsons School of
Design and the Milano School of Urban Management. The textile and
apparel industry in New York City has shrunk slowly over the past
four decades but remains the largest manufacturing industry in the
New York City in terms of employment. Fashion design in New York
is on the cutting edge of global trends, and the retail sector in
New York City has expanded and changed. Overall, the industry supports
both high-skill design and marketing jobs and low-skill sewing and
shipping work. With the globalization of production, the decline
in transportation costs, the phase-out of the Multi-Fiber Arrangement
and increasing control of the apparel retail industry by mega-chains
like Wal-Mart, the industry's future in New York City is in doubt.
The rise of dynamic, design-intensive retailers such as Zara, on
the other hand, point in the direction of increased reliance on
local sources for fashion design and production. The purpose of
the Apparel Industry Study Group at New School University is to
bring together designers, marketing experts, economists and urban
planners to study the future of this industry and to recommend policies
for keeping the industry in New York strong and dynamic.
The Apparel
Industry Study Group will be based at New School University, and
begin by hosting a series of speakers on the future of the industry.
The Group will then embark on a program of research aimed at better
understanding the industry's global dynamics, the linkages among
fashion designers, retailers and the pattern of production sourcing,
the importance of international commercial and immigration policy
and the role of organized labor.
For more information
on the Apparel Industry Study Group at New School University, contact
Professor William Milberg, Department of Economics, Graduate Faculty,
New School University, 65 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10003, tel: (212)
229-5717, fax: (212) 229-5724, e-mail: milbergw@newschool.edu
Policy Notes:
Milberg, William, Melissa Mahoney, Markus Schneider, and Rudi von Arnim (2006) "Spurring Growth Dynamics from Services Offshoring"
Publications:
Milberg, William
[ed.] (2004), Labour
and the Globalization of Production: Causes and Consequences of
Industrial Upgrading, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
William Milberg
and Ellen Houston (2005), 'The
High Road and the Low Road to International Competitiveness: Extending
the Neo-Schumpeterian Trade Model Beyond Technology', International
Review of Applied Economics, 19, 139-164.
Milberg (2004),
'The
changing structure of international trade linked to global production
systems: what are the policy implications?' International Labour
Review, 143, 45-90.
David Kucera
and William Milberg (2003). 'Deindustrialization
and Changes in the Manufacturing Trade: Factor Content Calculations
for 1978-1995', Review of World Economics, 139.
William Milberg
(2002) 'Say's
Law in the open economy: Keynes's rejection of the theory of comparative
advantage', in Sheila C. Dow and John Hillard, Keynes, Uncertainty
and the Global Economy: Beyond Keynes, Volume Two, Northampton:
Edward Elgar, pp. 239-253.
Working Papers:
William Milberg,
2002, "Trade
and Competition Policy"
Links:
Apparel Industry Study Group
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