The Changing Firm and Country Boundaries of US Manufacturers in Global Value Chains
记录了美国企业如何跨越企业边界和国家边界组织商品生产，发现“无工厂商品生产者”这一特殊企业类型日益重要，其外包物理生产往往也意味着离岸生产，但这类企业与拥有国内外工厂的企业都雇佣大量美国知识工人，表明国外生产可能支持国内创新。
This paper documents how US firms organize goods production across firm and country boundaries. Most US firms that perform physical transformation tasks in-house using foreign manufacturing plants in 2007 also own US manufacturing plants; moreover, manufacturing comprises their main domestic activity. By contrast, “factoryless goods producers” outsource all physical transformation tasks to arm's-length contractors, focusing their in-house efforts on design and marketing. This dis tinct firm type is missing from standard analyses of manufacturing, growing in importance, and increasingly reliant on foreign suppliers. Physical transformation “within-the-firm” thus coincides with substantial physical transformation “within-the-country ,” whereas its performance “outside-the-firm” often also implies “outside-the-country.” Despite these differences, factoryless goods producers and firms with foreign and domestic manufacturing plants both employ relatively high shares of US knowledge workers. These patterns call for new models and data to capture the potential for foreign production to support domestic innovation, which US firms leverage around the world.