TY - JOUR

T1 - Offshoring and firm performance

T2 - self-selection, effects on performance, or both ?

AU - Wagner, Joachim

PY - 2011/6

Y1 - 2011/6

N2 - This paper uses unique new data for German manufacturing enterprises from matched regular surveys and a special purpose survey to investigate the causal effect of relocation of activities to a foreign country on firm performance. Compared to non-offshoring firms, firms that relocated activities were larger and more productive, and had a higher share of exports in total sales. These differences existed the year before some firms started to relocate, and this points to self-selection of "better" firms into offshoring. To investigate the causal effects of offshoring, six different variants of a matching approach are used. Contrary to what is often argued we find no evidence for a large negative causal effect of offshoring on employment in Germany.

AB - This paper uses unique new data for German manufacturing enterprises from matched regular surveys and a special purpose survey to investigate the causal effect of relocation of activities to a foreign country on firm performance. Compared to non-offshoring firms, firms that relocated activities were larger and more productive, and had a higher share of exports in total sales. These differences existed the year before some firms started to relocate, and this points to self-selection of "better" firms into offshoring. To investigate the causal effects of offshoring, six different variants of a matching approach are used. Contrary to what is often argued we find no evidence for a large negative causal effect of offshoring on employment in Germany.

KW - Economics

KW - Enterprise panel data

KW - Germany

KW - Offshoring

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=79955122294&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1007/s10290-010-0078-2

DO - 10.1007/s10290-010-0078-2

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 147

SP - 217

EP - 247

JO - Review of World Economics

JF - Review of World Economics

SN - 1610-2878

IS - 2

ER -