Off-Shoring And Productivity Growth In The Italian Manufacturing Industries

The authors employ input-output tables to study the relation between off-shoring and productivity growth in the Italian manufacturing industries in 1995-2003. The results indicate that not all types of off-shoring are positively related to productivity growth. In particular, the international outsourcing of intermediates within the same industry ("Narrow off-shoring") is beneficial for productivity growth, while the off-shoring of services is not. They also find that the way in which off-shoring is measured may matter considerably. The positive relation between off-shoring of intermediates and productivity growth disappears when the direct measure of off-shoring is replaced with the Feenstra-Hanson measure employed in other studies.