OPTIONAL: “Five Facts about Value-Added Exports and Implications for Macroeconomics and Trade Research” by Robert Johnson, 2014
1. What’s the problem about measuring trade in “gross” terms?
2. What is potentially misleading about bilateral trade statistics currently?
3. What’s the data requirement to compute value-added trade?
4. Name some statistics that can be drastically changed by using the value-added approach to measure trade flows.
. “The role of global supply chains in the transmission of shocks: Firm-level evidence from the 2011 Tohoku earthquake” by Boehm, Flaaen, and Pandalai Nayar VOX-EU January 2015
1. We want to establish the effect of … on …
2. Why do we need a “natural experiment”?
3. Name at least two pieces of evidence that need to be established in order to claim: “Tohoku got transmitted to the U.S. economy”
4. What’s the main result?
5. What’s the policy implication of the finding?
. “Technology and Production Fragmentation: Domestic vs Foreign Sourcing ” by Teresa Fort, 2014
1. Define “Contract Manufacturing Services” (CMS).
2. Are “imports of CMS” a good measure of offshoring? Is it better than other measures we studied? Why?
3. Name three characteristics of firms that perform CMS.
a. Is there a difference among firms doing domestic vs foreign outsourcing?
4. Can you think of a concrete example of a firm with CMS abroad?
5. How is “communication technology” measured?
6. State the main result of the paper.
. “Factory-less Goods Producing Firms” by Bernard and Fort, 2015
1. Define a factory-less goods producing (FGP) firm.
2. Name three characteristics of these firms.
3. Does the presence of these firms change the way we think about manufacturing jobs and manufacturing statistics?