International Outsourcing and the Skill Structure of Labour Demand in the United Kingdom

Abstract

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Is labor flexibility a substitute to offshoring? Evidence from Italian manufacturing

“…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.…”

The effects at home of initiating production abroad: evidence from matched French firms

“…Following Feenstra and Hanson (1999), several works have studied how foreign outsourcing, evaluated through direct or indirect measurements of imported intermediate inputs, affect labour demand (see e.g. Hijzen et al 2005, Ekholm and Hakkala 2005, or Munch and Skaksen 2009. The results are mixed but point in several cases to a significant impact of outsourcing upon labour demand.…”

Specialization, outsourcing and wages

“…It should be noted that the Danish input-output tables have an explicit distinction between intermediate purchases from domestic and foreign suppliers. We follow Hijzen et al (2005) among others, and define outsourcing as intermediate goods divided by industry output. Figure 1 shows the measures of domestic and foreign outsourcing as a weighted average for all manufacturing industries.…”