Service Offshoring and Productivity: Evidence from the United States

Mary Amiti, Shang-Jin Wei

NBER Working Paper No. 11926
Issued in January 2006
NBER Program(s):   ITI   PR

The practice of sourcing service inputs from overseas suppliers has been growing in response to new technologies that have made it possible to trade in some business and computing services that were previously considered non-tradable. This paper estimates the effects of offshoring on productivity in US manufacturing industries between 1992 and 2000. It finds that service offshoring has a significant positive effect on productivity in the US, accounting for around 10 percent of labor productivity growth during this period. Offshoring material inputs also has a positive effect on productivity, but the magnitude is smaller accounting for approximately 5 percent of productivity growth.

(258 K)

An NBER digest for this paper is available.

Published: Mary Amiti & Shang-Jin Wei, 2009. "Service Offshoring and Productivity: Evidence from the US," The World Economy, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 32(2), pages 203-220, 02.

This paper is available as PDF (258 K) or via email.

This paper was revised on April 3, 2007

Acknowledgments

Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX