Offshoring,immigration, and the native wage distribution

Abstract This paper presents a simple model that examines the impact of offshoring and immigration on wages and tests these predictions using U.S. state‐industry‐year panel data. According to the model, the productivity effect causes offshoring to have a more positive impact on low‐skilled wages than immigration, but this gap decreases with the workers’ skill level. The empirical results confirm both of these predictions and thus present direct evidence of the productivity effect. Furthermore, the results provide important insight into how specific components of offshoring and immigration affect the wages of particular types of native workers.