Search Results
Journal Article
The extent and impact of outsourcing: evidence from Germany
The authors use data from several sources, including plant-level data from the manufacturing sector in Germany, to expand the literature on outsourcing. They find that, in Germany, the extent of outsourcing among manufacturing industries is higher than among service industries and that the outsourcing intensity of these industries did not change much between 1995 and 2005. They also find a statistically significantly positive impact of industry-level outsourcing intensity on German plant-level labor produc- tivity for both 2000 and 2005. The estimated economic impact of outsourcing on ...
Journal Article
Perspective: outsourcing jobs overseas: a cause for concern?
A rash of media stories has heightened concern about foreign outsourcing of U. S. jobs. But analyses show that many of these reports may have exaggerated the extent and economic impact of jobs moving overseas.
Working Paper
Efficient organization of production: nested versus horizontal outsourcing
The authors characterize equilibrium and efficient modes of production by comparing nested (vertical) outsourcing with horizontal outsourcing. Nested outsourcing is found to be inefficient unless the cost of monitoring outsourced production lines increases sharply with the number of subcontractors and not only with the number of outsourced components. They characterize a market failure in which nested outsourcing is selected when the case dictates that horizontal outsourcing is the efficient outsourcing mode. This failure occurs at an intermediate range of the costs of monitoring outsourcing ...
Journal Article
Beyond the border: Do what you do best, outsource the rest?
What is outsourcing? Why is India the leading country in attracting outsourced work? And what are the economic and political implications as firms do what they do best and outsource the rest?
Working Paper
The asymmetric effects of tariffs on intra-firm trade and offshoring decisions
This paper studies the effects of tariffs on intra-firm trade. Building on the Antrs and Helpman (2004) North-South theoretical framework, I show that higher Northern tariffs reduce the incentives for outsourcing and offshoring, while higher Southern tariffs have the opposite effects. I also show that increased offshoring and outsourcing imply an increase in the ratio of Northern intra-firm imports to total imports, which is an empirically testable prediction. Using a highly disaggregated dataset of U.S. (the North) imports and relevant tariffs, I find robust evidence to support the model's ...
Conference Paper
The impact of information asymmetry on debt pricing and maturity
Journal Article
Outsourcing, firm size, and product complexity: evidence from credit unions
Outsourcing business services is a key concern in the modern economy. Focusing on data processing services for credit unions from 1994 to 2003, the authors find that both credit union size and the diversity of their product offerings influence the propensity to outsource. The results suggest that simple scale-economy-based explanations for outsourcing may be inadequate.
Working Paper
Incidence of an outsourcing tax on intermediate inputs
The paper uses a Hecksher-Ohlin-Samuelson type general equilibrium framework to consider the incidence of an outsourcing tax on an economy in which the production of a specific intermediate input has been fragmented and outsourced. When the input is ?non-traded?, the outsourcing tax can reduce domestic wages even if the intermediate input producing sector is the most capital-intensive sector of the economy. This implies that contrary to received wisdom, a tax on a capital-intensive sector may actually hurt labor. On the other hand, if the intermediate input is traded, the outsourcing tax must ...
Working Paper
Outsourcing business services and the role of central administrative offices
In this paper, I study whether there is any evidence that the market scale surrounding a central administrative office (CAO), which includes corporate headquarters, influences a firm's cost-effectiveness in procuring business services. By linking plant-level data from the 1992 Annual Survey of Manufactures with CAO information from the Survey of Auxiliary Establishments, I examine manufacturing plants' practice of outsourcing services in relation to the size of the local service market surrounding the plant and that surrounding the plant's CAO. I found statistically significant evidence that ...