Outsourcing and Firm Productivity in Irish Manufacturing

Fergal McCann

No 21, FIW Working Paper series from FIW

Abstract: The causality from outsourcing, defined as the procurement of inputs from outside the boundaries of the firm, to productivity is tested for a large panel of Irish manufacturing firms. Theory suggests that as firms outsource more 'non-core' activities to specialized providers, productivity due to the firm benefiting from cheaper or higher-quality inputs and from reallocation of resources towards higher value-added activities. The international outsourcing case adds another dimension in the form of input variety, quality and technological embeddedness. I test the above hypothesis using a "System GMM" estimator to control for endogeneity in the panel and allow for a lagged dependent variable to be a regressor. International outsourcing is found to lead to productivity gains, but upon closer inspection it seems that firms? international orientation and type of industry both matter.

Keywords: Outsourcing; Productivity; Firm Structure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F23 L23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28
Date: 2009-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.fiw.ac.at/fileadmin/Documents/Publikati ... per/N_021-mccann.pdf full text (application/pdf)
none

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wsr:wpaper:y:2009:i:021

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
FIW Project Office Austrian Institute of Economic Research Arsenal Objekt 20 A-1030 Vienna

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in FIW Working Paper series from FIW
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().