‘Slicing the Value Chain’ Internationally: Empirical Evidence on the Offshoring Strategy by French Firms

This study analyses firms’ offshoring strategy from an empirical perspective. It focuses on market thickness, firm heterogeneity and the relative costs of organisation modes. This study focuses on a set of theoretical predictions and creates a set of suitable variables to test their validity. This analysis is based on a data set from French manufacturing firms that provides detailed information on their offshoring strategy. The choice of offshoring modes is investigated through the estimation of a multinomial logit model and related to a set of explanatory variables at firm, industry and country level. The results emphasise the role of firm heterogeneity, asset specificity and of market thickness.