Off-shoring and Productivity Growth in the Italian Manufacturing Industries -super-‡

Abstract

We study the relation between the off-shoring of intermediates and services and productivity growth in the Italian manufacturing industries in 1995-2003. Our results indicate that the off-shoring of intermediates within the same industry ('narrow off-shoring') is beneficial for productivity growth, while the off-shoring of services is not. We 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 is there with our direct measures based on input-output data but disappears when either a broad measure or the Feenstra-Hanson off-shoring measure employed in other studies are used instead. (JEL codes: F16, F23, 04) Copyright , Oxford University Press.