“…This may result in an increase of the share of flexible contracts, to facilitate the future offshoring process, or to a reduction of temporary workers, if firms see the expected delocalization as a cost-cutting strategy alternative to flexibilization (Pelegrìn and Bolancé, 2011;Capasso et al, 2013). This case is consistent with the firms' own statements about the reasons why they offshore, with the descriptive analysis of the data (Table 1), and with the lower relative demand by offshoring firms for unskilled labor (Head and Ries, 2002;Hijzen et al, 2005;Becker et al, Source: Our elaboration on Survey on Manufacturing Firm (SMF) data, IX and X waves. 15 As Benfratello et al (2009), who also use data from the SMF, we are not able to control for firm's productivity.…”