Macroeconomic Consequences of Outsourcing: An Analysis of Growth, Welfare, and Product Variety

Outsourcing of non-core activities is nowadays a common business strategy. Declining transaction and transportation costs caused by the advent of Information and Communication Technology are a potentially important driving force behind this development. This paper provides a theoretical framework for analysing a firm's incentive to follow such a strategy of outsourcing and its consequences for macroeconomic variables like growth and product variety. We divide production activities into core and non-core activities. Non-core activities can be performed within the firm or can be mediated by the market. We derive conditions under which outsourcing occurs, and under which outsourcing is socially desirable. These conditions do not necessarily coincide. Outsourcing may hence be a profitable strategy for firms, while it is socially suboptimal. Crucial parameters in the model are the relative scale of core versus non-core activities, management costs, transaction costs and love for variety of consumers.     

Outsourcing and skill-specific employment in a small economy: Austria after the fall of the Iron Curtain

We set up a model, in which firms in a small industrializedcountry outsource part of their production to a foreign economy,which is rich in low-skilled labour. We analyse, how a declinein trade costs affects outsourcing activities and the productionstructure in the small economy. A stimulation of cross-borderoutsourcing raises wage dispersion and, if labour markets areunionized, also the employment of high-skilled relative to low-skilledlabour. Using a panel of Austrian industries, we find, first,that decreasing trade barriers—as observed after the fallof the Iron Curtain—indeed stimulate outsourcing to Centraland Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and, second,that outsourcing to these countries significantly shifts relativeemployment in favour of high-skilled labour.     

To make or to buy from a common supplier? Strategic considerations and welfare consequences

Consider two downstream firms that each can either produce an input in-house or purchase it from an upstream supplier. We show that depending on the difference between the supplier's and the downstream firms' in-house production costs, outsourcing by both firms could help them achieve a Pareto improvement or leave them trapped in a prisoner's dilemma. Furthermore, we find that two downstream firms may play a chicken game in which each makes a sourcing decision different from its rival if the input supplier is not as efficient as in the previous cases. The welfare implications of various sourcing outcomes are explored.     

Input specificity and global sourcing

This paper identifies a new industry-equilibrium channel through which a firm’s productivity affects its organizational choice. In a two-country model with firm heterogeneity and incomplete contracts, we show that the degree of input specificity and the hold-up friction in an outsourcing relation become a function of the final good firm’s productivity when inputs are not completely specific. We examine the implications for the equilibrium international sorting pattern of firms.     

Are China's trade interests overestimated? Evidence from firms’ importing behavior and pollution emissions

Importing is an important driving force for a country's economic growth. While importing promotes the expansion of economic scale, does it also lead the increase of pollution emissions in production? In this paper, we establish a micro theoretical model to analyze the impacts of importing on firms’ environmental performance, and then use the data of China's manufacturing firms for empirical tests. We show that the importing of intermediate goods or capital goods will lead to the increase of firms’ production scale, and thereby increasing their total emissions, which suggests that China's environment will be deteriorated by importing. On the other hand, importing also has some positive environmental effects that firms will increase their abatement investment after importing intermediate goods or capital goods, thus firms’ emission intensity can be effectively reduced. Altogether, this paper provides important evidence on the impacts of importing on pollution emissions at product-level. We suggest that when analyzing China's interests in trade, the environmental effects of trade should be taken into consideration, otherwise China's gains from trade will be overestimated. This paper also has important implications that while developing the economy through international trade, the government should strengthen environmental protection and advocate green trade.     

The Life Cycle of the U.S. Tire Industry

We introduce a new theory of industry evolution. According to our model, the nonmonotonicity in firm numbers found in many young industries is a consequence of the gradual decline in unit costs. Early stages of the industry life cycle, when unit costs and profit margins are high, display positive net entry rates. In later stages, declining unit costs and increasing competition limit the market room for (fringe) firms accumulating in a shakeout. The model explains paths of output, price level, and firm numbers using a recursive system of equations. We apply the model to the U.S. tire industry.     

Post-production services and optimal integration strategies for the multinational firm

This paper examines firms’ decision of integrating production and post-production services to serve foreign markets. The author builds a model in which heterogeneous firms choose different locations to produce output, while employ local or send home managers from headquarters to provide post-production services. The model shows that the equilibrium decision of a firm depends on its own productivity level and the mobility of transferring home managers across borders. Using Korean firm- and affiliate-level data, empirical results show that firms choose production locations based on their productivity levels and transport costs, while firms’ choice of service managers depend on informal trade barriers across borders. These findings are consistent with the theoretical implications.     

The poverty trap: The dual externality model and its policy implications

This paper analyzes poverty traps in a monopolistic competition general equilibrium model with aggregate demand externality. In our model, the central hypothesis is represented by the introduction of externalities in fixed costs that firms have to incur in order to industrialize as a spillover across sectors. By this we mean that the fixed cost incurred by a firm in order to start production can reduce the fixed cost that firms in other sectors of the economy must incur. With such an assumption, we can show the possibility for an economy to be locked in at different stages of development. We then proceed to discuss the policy implications and the possible role for government intervention. To this end we provide a potential framework of reference that, if properly developed, may be useful in policy design.     

The dynamics of outsourcing: From labor cost‐saving to preference‐based outsourcing

Jones's (2000) celebrated book has inspired a generation of work devoted to understanding the causes and consequences of outsourcing. While much of this work has focused on the outsourcing versus domestic production decision of the firm, with labor cost‐saving as the key driver for outsourcing, we further explore how preference‐based outsourcing may arise in a dynamic world equilibrium. We address this problem in a North–South model in which the outsourcing decision depends not only on labor costs but also on information about local preferences that arise with outsourcing. As the South develops, demand for manufactured goods becomes more important, so identifying specific tastes of Southern consumers matters more. As a result, preference‐based outsourcing displaces cost‐saving outsourcing. Our quantitative analysis indicates that, as both agricultural and manufacturing technologies grow over time, the dynamic world equilibrium switches from the export regime to the cost‐saving outsourcing regime, and eventually to the preference‐based outsourcing regime.     

Skilled-Labor Intensity Differences Across Firms,Endogenous Product Quality,and Wage Inequality

This paper proposes a theory to explain the relative wage-rate increase for skilled labor that results from trade liberalization that relies on within-sector reallocations of production resources (skilled and unskilled labor) across firms. Motivated by some stylized facts, in a model with firm heterogeneity, including firms that differ in their skill intensity even within a narrowly defined industry, firms with relatively high skill intensity that are more likely to be exporters, and a positive association between a firm’s skill intensity and its product quality, I develop a general equilibrium model where firms with a higher skill intensity endogenously choose a higher-quality product, and tend to be more profitable. In this framework, a reduction in trade costs allows members of the workforce to reallocate to more efficient firms that produce higher-quality products, using their skilled labor more intensively, resulting in a rising skill premium. The main sources of the increasing wage inequality that followed trade openness are a positive link between a firm’s skill intensity, its product quality, and quality competition.     

Heterogeneous multinational firms and productivity gains from falling FDI barriers

This paper quantitatively assesses the impact of falling foreign direct investment (FDI) barriers on individual firms and its implications for intra-industry reallocation and aggregate productivity. We calibrate the firm-heterogeneity model of Eaton et al. (Econometrica 79(5):1453–1498, 2011) to match micro-level data on Japanese multinational firms facing fixed and variable costs of foreign production. We demonstrate that the calibrated model can be used to replicate the entry and sales patterns of Japanese multinationals. Counterfactual simulations show that declining FDI barriers lead to a disproportionate expansion of foreign production by more efficient firms relative to less efficient firms. A hypothetical 20 % reduction in FDI barriers is found to generate up to a 26.8 % improvement in industry-level productivity through global market-share reallocations within the industry. Compared with fixed entry barriers, reallocation effects and productivity gains are larger for a reduction of variable costs of foreign production.     

Global outsourcing or foreign direct investment: Why apple chose outsourcing for the iPod

A simple model is presented, where a firm's productivity is endogenized by its R&D investment. It shows that the most productive firms may prefer international outsourcing to foreign direct investment (FDI) in industries with a high innovation share. The high innovation share motivates the firms to economize on organizational cost in order to save resources for R&D investment, making outsourcing preferable to FDI because the former incurs a smaller organizational cost. This model helps explain why Apple Inc., belonging to the electronics industry, which has a particularly high innovation share, launched its innovative iPod through international outsourcing instead of FDI.     

International relocation,difference in production costs,and welfare: An analysis based on a two-country model

This paper examines whether or not the globalization of Japanese companies is a problem for the Japanese economy. To examine this, using the theoretical model, the paper examines whether the globalization of home-located tradable goods firms provides a benefit to the home country from the perspective of welfare. Specifically, since globalization is thought to have begun based on the difference in production costs of the home and the foreign country, we examine how an increase of productivity in the foreign non-tradable goods sector, which is the principal factor in the difference in production costs between the two countries, affects the welfare of the home country. We show that such an increase of productivity not only induces enterprise relocation, but also improves the welfare of the home country. In particular, the latter is demonstrated by an increase in the real flow of dividends that results from holding equities in tradable goods firms located abroad, i.e., the improvement in the income account. Hence, since the prediction of the model indicates that the globalization of firms is not a problem, it can be said that the globalization of Japanese firms is not a problem for the Japanese economy.     

Endogenous transportation technology in a Cournot differential game with intraindustry trade

We investigate a dynamic Cournot duopoly with intraindustry trade, where firms invest in R&D to reduce the level of iceberg transportation costs. We adopt both open-loop and closed-loop equilibrium concepts, showing that a unique (saddle point) steady state exists in both cases. In the open-loop model, optimal investments and the resulting efficiency of transportation technology are independent of the relative size of the two countries. On the contrary, in the closed-loop case firms’ R&D incentives are driven by the relative size of the two countries. Policy implications are also evaluated.     

The role of FDI in domestic exporting: Evidence from China

This paper investigates the impact of FDI on domestic exporting firms. We show that domestic firms respond to an increase in the presence of FDI by increasing their exports even though the increase in foreign presence can drive up production costs and make the domestic market more profitable. Our test case for this hypothesis is China, where we confirm the significant positive impact of FDI on domestic firms’ exports. This finding sheds light on the massive exports and rapid inflow of foreign investment that have been observed in China in the past three decades.     

Trade liberalization induced profitability enhancement? The impact of intermediate input imports on firm profitability

Using the detailed data on production and transaction of Chinese manufacturing firms, we investigate how the input tariff liberalization affects firm profitability and explore the underlying channels of this effect. We find that input tariff reduction significantly increases firms’ profitability. Our finding is robust to a variety of specifications. We further find that the quality upgrading of imported intermediate inputs and the reduction of inventory costs are the main reasons for the profit-enhancing effect of input tariff reduction. Our study has important policy implications for the economic growth in the long run and the economic recovery during the epidemic of COVID-19.     

Environmental regulation,firm heterogeneity,and intra-industry reallocation

We describe a model with firm heterogeneity and endogenous pollution abatement to show how emission intensity and exit/entry selections vary across firms. Using Chinese firm-level emission and production data, we find evidence that low productivity firms have higher emission intensity. The emission intensity of firms with productivity below 10 percentile is 5.26 times larger than firms with productivity above 90 percentile. Combining the Annual Survey of Chinese Industrial Enterprises (CIE) data, and applying a triple-difference research design, we find that firms with high emission intensity or low productivity have a higher probability of exit when exposed to strict environmental policy. We also find the exit of unproductive firms contributes to aggregate productivity and strict environmental policy can help to reduce misallocation.     

How the Internet Promotes China's Exports: A Firm‐level Perspective

The development of information and communications technology (ICT), particularly the Internet, has reduced trade costs. However, it remains unclear whether these reduced costs are reflected in the “extensive margins” of firms’ exports (which refer to the probability of firms exporting) or the “intensive margins” (which refer to the value of firms’ export). To test this, we used the concepts of information cost and binary margins, an augmented trade model of firm heterogeneity, a two‐stage Heckman estimation, and data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey of Chinese firms in 2012. The results revealed that reduced trade costs from the use of ICT were positively related to extensive margins but that the connection with intensive margins was not significant. The results lead to the conclusion that reduced information costs related to a firm's exporting behavior were primarily reflected in variable trade costs. This study offers theoretical and empirical evidence for China's policies towards the Internet, which are relevant for the export of manufactured goods. The government should encourage the use of ICT to enhance firms’ export opportunities while facing current trade policy uncertainty.     

Development Cost Capitalization During R&D Races

We investigate the economic effects of capitalizing development costs during a race between two firms to discover and develop a new technology. Winning the race requires success in the research stage and success in the development stage. Development costs are expensed in some settings, but capitalized in others. Capitalization of development costs provides a credible signal regarding progress in the race, allowing the rival to make a more informed decision regarding whether to proceed with development. We study the effects of this signal on the firms’ investment decisions and social welfare. We show that if both firms capitalize instead of expense development costs, aggregate investment in research weakly increases but aggregate investment in development weakly decreases. We also characterize the accounting policies that the two rival firms would adopt if they could freely choose either an expensing policy or a capitalization policy.     

产品内分工的生产组织模式选择——基于中国产业角度的实证研究

本文基于不完全契约和交易成本的视角,构建了产业层面的产品内分工生产组织模式选择的理论模型,对跨国公司在选择中间品供应商时的生产组织模式进行了分析,并运用中国制造业的数据加以实证检验。结论表明:中间品行业的有形资本密集度越高,跨国公司使用垂直FDI的倾向越高;中间品行业的人力资本密集度越高、行业的市场厚度越大、沉没成本越大以及中间品市场环境越完善,跨国公司使用外包获取中间品的倾向越高。基于此本文通过实证分析指出:我国作为东道国在吸引垂直FDI和跨国外包时,资本密集度高的产业应优先吸收FDI;人力资本丰富、市场厚度大且沉没成本大的产业在吸收外包方面有优势,应优先发展跨国外包,这对中国目前新兴起的OFDI也提供了一定的借鉴意义。