OFFSHORING COMPONENTS AND THEIR EFFECT ON EMPLOYMENT: FIRMS DECIDING ABOUT HOW AND WHERE

Nuria Gómez Sanz (1) , María Ángeles Cadarso Vecina (1) , Luis Antonio López Santiago (1) , María Ángeles Tobarra Gómez (1)

1 Análisis Económico y Finanzas

Firms must take two fundamental decisions: how and where to produce. Traditional measures of offshoring include information on both decisions but cannot distinguish between them. In this paper we attempt to distinguish the evolution of the requirement of inputs per unit of output (how to produce) from the delocalisation of production to others countries (where to produce). We call global technical change to the first element and net offshoring to the second. We further decompose net offshoring into net inter-industry substitution and intra-industrial offshoring (replacement of domestic inputs for imported ones from the same sector). This last measure quantifies better the concept of delocalisation of production to other countries looking for lower costs, the original idea behind offshoring. This decomposition allows us to further investigate on whether it is technical change or net offshoring the main factor in recent Spanish industrial employment changes.

Mots clés: Social Sciences & Humanities

Nuria Gómez Sanz, María Ángeles Cadarso Vecina, Luis Antonio López Santiago, María Ángeles Tobarra Gómez. OFFSHORING COMPONENTS AND THEIR EFFECT ON EMPLOYMENT: FIRMS DECIDING ABOUT HOW AND WHERE. Applied Economics, 2011, pp.1. ⟨10.1080/00036846.2010.532113⟩. ⟨hal-00660894⟩