Productivity effects of international outsourcing: evidence from plant-level data

Abstract.  We investigate the impact of international outsourcing on productivity using plant-level data for Irish manufacturing. Specifically, we distinguish the effect of outsourcing of materials from services inputs. Moreover, we examine whether the impact on productivity is different for plants being more embedded in international markets through exporting or being part of a multinational. Our results show robust evidence for positive effects from outsourcing of services inputs for exporters, either domestic or foreign owned. By contrast, we find no statistically significant evidence of an impact of international outsourcing of services on productivity for firms not operating on the export market.     

Manufacturing outsourcing and its effect on plant performance—lessons for KIBS outsourcing

Despite the proclaimed advantages and popularity of outsourcing manufacturing and knowledge-intensive business services, there are few and mainly contradictory studies of its short- and long-term effects. The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the way in which outsourcing manufacturing and design work relates to performance at plant level. The study is based on a large-scale survey among a representative sample of Swedish engineering plants. The results show no significant effects from outsourcing manufacturing on plant operating performance. The paper further shows that investments in technological and organizational capabilities explain the improvements of performance to a significantly higher extent than does outsourcing. The problems of additional costs and managing dependencies when applying partial outsourcing and separating interdependent key processes provide important insights to the analysis on the effects of outsourcing knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS).     

THE IMPACT OF INTERNATIONAL OUTSOURCING ON LABOUR MARKET DYNAMICS IN GERMANY

Using an administrative data set containing daily information on individual workers' employment histories, we investigate how workers' labour market transitions are affected by international outsourcing. In order to do so, we estimate hazard rate models for match separations, as well as for worker flows from employment to another job, to unemployment, and to nonparticipation. Outsourcing has a positive but small impact on overall job stability in the manufacturing sector, and considerably increases job stability in the service sector. However, the effect of outsourcing varies strongly across skill levels and age groups, with negative effects for some workers. This is especially the case in the manufacturing sector, where the hazard of transiting to nonemployment rises with international outsourcing for medium‐skilled and older workers.     

Outsourcing and productivity growth in services

Outsourcing from manufacturing firms has fueled some of the service sector's rapid growth. We model the firm's decision to outsource and show that increases in outsourcing may explain part of the increase in the divergence in productivity growth between manufacturing and services. We also analyze the implications of outsourcing for output and productivity growth of service industries. Our findings indicate that it has reduced service sector productivity in the short run. In contrast to earlier work on services (Baumol, W.J., 1967. American Economic Review 57, 415–426. Baumol, W.J., Blackman, A.B., Wolff, E.N., 1985. American Economic Review 75, 806–817), we project that productivity growth in services is likely to increase, once demand growth from manufacturing due to outsourcing subsides.     

Market thickness,sunk costs,productivity, and the outsourcing decision: an empirical analysis of manufacturing firms in France

Abstract This paper presents an empirical analysis of outsourcing behaviour by French manufacturing industries. It focuses on the effects of market thickness, sunk costs, and the productivity of firms on the outsourcing decision. I estimate a dynamic probit model where outsourcing decision is linked to past outsourcing behaviour. The results show that outsourcing is a persistent strategy adopted by large firms and suggest the presence of significant sunk costs associated with outsourcing. The results also show that market thickness reduces search costs and enhances the establishment of outsourcing relationships.     

金融离岸服务外包的市场潜力与提升策略研究——以北京市为例

目前在世界经济全球化、国际金融自由化的总体发展态势情况之下,国际金融服务外包产业呈现出产业链分工连续细化,发包规模、地域持续拓展,承包市场重心向亚太地区转移等发展趋势。在此国际大背景下,北京金融服务外包发展潜力巨大,具体表现在市场需求主体持续增长、产业集群效应显著、业务范围不断拓展等方面。北京应通过制定鼓励性的财税和金融政策积极支持金融服务外包的发展,组建大型金融服务外包企业提升国际竞争力,推行行业标准化、加强风险控制与监管,进行多层次人才培养等措施,充分发挥北京金融服务外包潜力,促进其快速发展。     

The emergence of the outsourcing market and product technological performance

This study is a novel empirical endeavor to analyze the impact of market demand and product technological performance on the growth of industry's outsourcing activities. Using the laptop computer industry as an example, this study examines the connection between the growth of outsourcing activities and product technological performance as well as market demand. The results suggest that, in addition to the relative efficiency assumed from transaction cost economies, the products' technological performance and market demand might also influence the growth of industry's outsourcing activities.     

逆向外包驱动大型复杂产品制造业集群升级的作用机理:“主-供”模式的调节作用

以大型复杂产品制造业集群为研究对象,考察了逆向外包驱动集群升级的作用机理。在分析逆向外包、"主制造商-供应商"生产组织模式、产品模块化与集群升级之间作用关系的基础上,构建了有中介的调节效应的理论模型,并以集群性质、集群规模和集群形成时间为控制变量,对该理论模型进行验证。结果表明:逆向外包对集群升级有显著的正向影响,"主制造商-供应商"模式对上述影响的正向调节作用是通过产品模块化这一中介变量实现的。     

The shift to services employment: A review of the literature

This paper provides an overview of literature on the employment shift towards services. It follows the three dimensions of structural change: inter-industry productivity differences, the inter-industry division of labor (outsourcing), and shifts in final demand. It concludes that the third dimension gained importance over the last decades although differential productivity growth continued to contribute to the rise of service employment as well. Outsourcing of service tasks from manufacturing industries increased but cannot explain much of the rise in service-industry employment over time. The shift to services is not just a price effect nor is it mainly the effect of the outsourcing of service activities from manufacturing industries. The shift to services is real.     

SCP框架下我国金融服务外包产业组织研究

金融服务外包是现代服务业发展的新业态和热点,在我国还是一个新兴产业。本文依据产业组织理论,运用SCP框架对我国金融服务外包产业的市场结构、市场行为、市场绩效进行了分析,发现我国金融服务外包产业在发展初期虽然存在市场集中度不高、进入和退出壁垒较高、差异化程度低以及不显著的市场行为等问题,但发展金融服务外包对我国金融机构及服务商提高经济效益、产品创新、提高服务质量、促进技术进步及组织变革等方面都表现出良好的市场绩效,表明我国发展此产业具有积极价值。本文就此提出了进一步优化组织结构、提高产业绩效的政策建议。     

Political preferences and public sector outsourcing

Given the intensive and ideologically charged debate over the use of private contractors for publicly funded services, it is somewhat surprising that many social scientists have preferred to explain government outsourcing by the pursuit of economic efficiency. Starting out from different theories, we investigate political explanations of government outsourcing using a Swedish data set in which outsourcing varies between municipalities and over time, as well as between services. Our identification strategy focuses on two services with similar contracting problems and local market conditions: preschools and primary schools. We study a period in which Swedish municipalities had full discretion in the provision of preschools, while their influence on the private provision of primary education was limited by a national voucher system. The comparison of preschools with primary schools in a difference-in-differences model suggests that the political color of the ruling majority influences outsourcing, which is consistent with the Citizen Candidate model of representative democracy.     

技术进步、企业边界与外包决策——基于中国制造业数据的经验研究

技术进步通过节约企业的内部协调成本和市场交易成本影响着企业边界的变动。技术进步对企业边界的影响往往集中体现于外包行为。笔者首先通过选取中国制造业的典型企业和行业作为样本,针对技术进步对企业边界造成的影响进行了实证研究;同时对技术进步与制造业相关行业的外包决策之间的关系进行了进一步的研究。研究结果表明,技术进步使得中国制造业企业的纵向一体化程度呈现增大的趋势,企业边界逐渐扩大;技术进步与外包行为间存在正相关的关系。     

食品供应链中的物流外包问题研究

食品供应链的具体形态和结构受到各种外部环境因素的影响。在食品供应链中发展物流外包,对于委托企业和供应链的整体绩效有着直接的促进效果。在食品供应链中的原材料供应、加工生产和销售等环节,物流外包均有着广阔的发展机会。食品供应链成员企业可以选择采取运输外包、配送外包、全部外包、合资和剥离等物流外包战略。     

Outsourcing and structural change. Application to a set of OECD countries

The examination in this paper aims to bridge outsourcing and structural change analyses in order to obtain more accurate insights into the extent of outsourcing and to extract more reliable policy recommendations for dealing with its effects. We do this by applying a ‘battery’ of outsourcing measurements to a group of OECD countries from 1980 to the mid 1990s. Expected results (e.g. the idiosyncratic outsourcing patterns of the UK) are confirmed on a more systematic and comparable basis, while original results (e.g. the low integration of business services in manufacturing in the former socialist economies) are based on the exploitation of new data.     

The Impact of Telecommunication Technologies on Competition in Services and Goods Markets: Empirical Evidence

In this paper, we empirically show that a more intensive use and wider adoption of telecommunication technologies significantly increases the level of product market competition in services and goods markets. Our results are consistent with the view that the use of telecommunication technologies can lower the costs of entry and search. These findings are robust to various measures of competition and a wide range of specification checks.     

Trade barriers,multinational involvement and intra-industry trade: panel data evidence from India

The article analyses the effects of trade barriers and multinationals on the intensity of intra-industry trade (IIT) in a panel of Indian manufacturing industries from 1988 to 1999. We find that the intensity of IIT increases with the reduction of trade barriers. This is expected as greater competition from imports leads individual plants in the domestic industry to specialize in the manufacturing of unique varieties. The analysis suggests that horizontal (market seeking) multinational activities in the domestic industries exert a negative influence on IIT. This is consistent with the view that horizontal multinationals displace exports to the host country. At the same time, our results indicate that IIT will be stimulated to the extent that the entry of multinationals induces intra-industry specialization. We also analyse the role of product differentiation and plant level scale economies in determining IIT.     

Economists' perceptions versus managers' decisions: an experiment in transaction-cost analysis

Are the perceptions of professional economists on transactioncosts consistent with make-or-buy decisions made within firms?The answer may have important implications for transaction costresearch. Data on firms' outsourcing during the new productdevelopment process are taken from a large-scale survey of UK,German and Irish manufacturing plants, and we test the consistencyof these outsourcing decisions with the predictions derivedfrom the transaction cost perceptions of a panel of economists.Little consistency is evident between actual outsourcing patternsand the predictions of the (Williamsonian) transactions costmodel derived from the panel of economists. There is, however,evidence of a systematic pattern to the differences, suggestingthat a competence or resource-based approach may be relevantto understanding firm outsourcing, and that firms are adoptinga strategic approach to managing their external relationships.     

东北装备制造业技术外包共生强度影响因素研究

强化装备制造业与其技术外包服务商之间的共生关系,对于提高装备制造企业技术竞争力和改善区域经济效率具有重要意义。论文针对东北地区装备制造企业技术外包共生关系强度及其影响因素进行了实证研究。研究结果表明东北地区装备制造企业技术外包共生关系发展尚处在中低水平程度上,在两类不同的外包共生网络中,其影响因素表现出完全不同的趋势。制造企业与其重要技术外包服务商之间的共生关系主要受到外包服务商的服务能力、本地中介机构能力、本地技术支持能力和信息共享能力的影响;而在一般技术外包服务领域中,关系要素占主要作用。提高服务企业能力以及改善共生环境要素,将有助于提高制造企业与其服务企业之间的共生强度,从而带动制造业的区域性发展。     

PRODUCT MARKET AND THE SIZE–WAGE DIFFERENTIAL*

Using directed search to model the product market and the labor market, I show that large plants can pay higher wages to homogeneous workers and earn higher expected profit per worker than small plants, although plants are identical except size. A large plant charges a higher price for its product and compensates buyers with a higher service probability. To capture this size‐ related benefit, large plants try to become larger by recruiting at high wages. This size–wage differential survives labor market competition because a high wage is harder to get than a low wage. Moreover, the size–wage differential increases with the product demand when demand is initially low and falls when demand is already high.     

Chinese competition and product variety of Indian firms

Using detailed firm-product-year data across manufacturing industries in India, and exploiting the exogenous nature of China’s entry into the WTO in 2001, we investigate the link between the impact of import penetration from China on the product variety of Indian manufacturing firms. We find: (i) robust and significant effects of product drop, with the effect coming only from competitive pressure in the domestic market; (ii) robust evidence of product drop or ‘creative destruction’ only for firms belonging to the lower-half of the size distribution; (iii) firms drop their peripheral/marginal products and concentrate on the core ones; and (iv) the result is strongest for firms producing intermediate goods. For an average Indian manufacturing firm, a 10 percentage point increase in India’s Chinese share of imports in the domestic market reduces the product scope of firms by 1.7–4.4%. In contrast, we find positive effects on product scope when firms are importing intermediate goods. We also find evidence of significant productivity effects and within-firm factor reallocation. Our results are consistent to a battery of robustness checks and IV estimation.