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 ...
Conference Paper
The impact of information asymmetry on debt pricing and maturity
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
Offshoring bias in U.S. manufacturing: implications for productivity and value added
The rapid growth of offshoring has sparked a contentious debate over its impact on the U.S. manufacturing sector, which has recorded steep employment declines yet strong output growth--a fact reconciled by the notable gains in manufacturing productivity. We maintain, however, that the dramatic acceleration of imports from developing countries has imparted a significant bias to the official statistics. In particular, the price declines associated with the shift to low-cost foreign suppliers are generally not captured in input cost and import price indexes. Although cost savings are a primary ...
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 ...
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 ...
Working Paper
Immigration and outsourcing: a general equilibrium analysis
We analyze the effects of outsourcing in the presence of a minimum wage by presenting a general-equilibrium model with an oligopolistic export sector and a competitive import-competing sector. An outsourcing tax is politically popular because it switches jobs to unemployed natives. It is also economically sound because it raises national income. An export subsidy may or may not be justified on welfare grounds. Increased international competition has no effect on the level of outsourcing, but the direction of its effect on unemployment and national income depends on the relative factor ...
Working Paper
Supplier switching and outsourcing
We examine supplier switching decisions using a unique database that tracks firms (credit unions) and their suppliers (data processing vendors); the data are in a panel, allowing us to track supplier switching decisions at a new level of detail. We focus on two sets of relationships. First, we estimate a model that relates supplier choices and switching to a variety of buyer- and supplier-specific characteristics. Second, we examine how> switching depends on the vendor relationships that credit unions choose: one is a partial form of outsourcing while the other is more complete. This allows ...
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 ...
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?