Trade and tasks: an exploration over three decades in Germany
结合德国工人调查和贸易数据，发现德国进口以中间品为主，劳动力日益专注于不可离岸的工作任务，而进口内容中可离岸任务密集度上升。
This paper combines representative worker-level data that cover time-varying job-level task characteristics of an economy over several decades with sector-level bilateral trade data for merchandise and services. We carefully create longitudinally consistent workplace characteristics from the German Qualification and Career Survey 1979–2006 and prepare trade flow statistics from varying sources. Four main facts emerge: (1) intermediate inputs constitute a major share of imports and dominate German imports since at least the 1970s; (2) the German workforce increasingly specializes in workplace activities and job requirements that are typically considered non-offshorable, mainly within and not between sectors and occupations; (3) the imputed activity and job requirement content of German imports grows relatively more intensive in work characteristics typically considered offshorable; and (4) labour-market institutions at German trade partners are largely unrelated to the changing task content of German imports but German sector-level outcomes exhibit some covariation consistent with faster task offshoring in sectors exposed to lower labour-market tightness. We discuss policy implications of these findings.