Foreign-Affiliate Activity and U.S. Skill Upgrading
利用1977-1994年美国制造业数据，发现外商直接投资并未导致美国行业内技能升级，尤其是1980年代日本绿地投资反而降低了熟练劳动力相对需求，挑战了技能偏向技术变革的假设。
There has been little analysis of the impact of inward foreign direct investment (FDI) on U.S. wage inequality, even though the presence of foreign-owned affiliates in the United States has arguably grown more rapidly in significance for the U.S. economy than trade flows. Using U.S. manufacturing data from 1977 to 1994, we find that inward FDI has not contributed to U.S. within-industry skill upgrading. In fact, the 1980s wave of Japanese greenfield investments was significantly correlated with lower, not higher, relative demand for skilled labor. This casts doubt upon one possible channel of skill-biased technological change that was previously unexplored. © 2001 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology