Part B

PART B
B) EXPLAIN HOW A LOWER LEVEL OF VERTICAL INTEGRATION IMPLIES

MORE OUTSOURCING AND LESS INSOURCING AND HOW IT SUPPORTS AN
ORGANISATION ACHIEVE COMPETITIVE PRIORITIES.DESCRIBE WITH
EXAMPLES WHERE APPROPRIATE.
The recent media and political attention on service outsourcing from developed to
developing countries gives the impression that outsourcing is exploding. As a result,
workers in industrial countries are anxious about job losses. This paper aims to
establish what are the hypes and what are the facts. The results show that although
service outsourcing has been steadily increasing it is still very low, and that in the
United States and many other industrial countries ‘insourcing’ of services is greater
than outsourcing. Using the United Kingdom as a case study, we find that job growth
at a sectoral level is not negatively related to service outsourcing.
1. INTRODUCTION
Outsourcing of services has received an enormous amount of attention in the media
and political circles in recent times. In just five months, between January and May
2004, there were 2,634 reports in US newspapers on service outsourcing, mostly
focusing on the fear of job losses.1 In particular, there have been reports about jobs
moving from industrial countries like the United States and the United Kingdom to
developing countries such as India. These concerns are not limited to the United
States. Similar reports appeared in newspapers in other industrial countries such as
the United Kingdom, which had 380 reports on outsourcing in its newspapers during
the same period. Newspapers in Australia have also published similar reports. Figure 1
plots a quarterly count of news stories and commentaries in major newspapers and
Figure 1. News count of outsourcing
Source: (1) US news sources: Dow Jones News Service, Financial Times, The New York
Times (Abstracts), The Seattle
Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post. (2) UK news sources: Daily Mail
(UK), Financial Times, The
Economist (UK), The Guardian (UK), The Observer (UK), The Sunday Times (London),
The Times (London).
newswire service reports on international service outsourcing from the first quarter
of 1991 to the first quarter of 2004 in the United States and the United Kingdom,
which we have constructed using an electronic database on newspaper articles
(FACTIVA). Both indices show a clear upward trend in media interest in international
outsourcing of services.2
All this media hype would lead one to believe that service outsourcing is some new
phenomenon that has exploded. What has stirred such an interest in outsourcing?
Many people would argue that outsourcing is indeed just a normal part of international
trade, whereas others see it as something different. To date, there is not even
agreement on what the term outsourcing means. The American Heritage Dictionary
2 The index for the United States exhibits local peaks in 1996, 2000 and 2004, which are
all presidential election years.
defines it as ‘The procuring of services or products . . . from an outside supplier or
manufacturer in order to cut costs.’ Some people interpret ‘outside’ to mean outside
the firm, and others outside the country. Both usages are common. But since
the main concerns in industrial countries are with ‘exporting jobs’ to developing
countries, we will restrict our attention to international outsourcing. We delve further
into the meaning and origins of outsourcing in the next section.
What is new about outsourcing today is that it is increasingly in services. Although

international outsourcing of material inputs is still far more quantitatively important
than services for a typical industrialized economy, as we show below, the current wave
of anxiety in advanced economies is mostly about international outsourcing of
services. There is a sense in which services outsourcing is qualitatively different from
material outsourcing in terms of the ‘stress effect’. In the past, the service sector was
largely considered impervious to international competition. Accountants did not fear
that someone abroad would take their high-paying jobs, but they certainly benefited
from the cheaper imported manufactured goods that open trade allowed. For this
reason, service sector professionals were likely to have been staunch supporters of
open trade. With the improvement in the communication technology such as the
Internet, services can cross political borders via the airwaves.3 Jobs in fields ranging
from architecture to radiology seem much more at risk. While it was possible for
firms to relocate abroad in the past, they had to give up something – their closeness
to important markets, for example. With the new technologies they can retain these
links while also obtaining access to cheap, but well-trained labour. The lack of control
and the worry that outsourcing could spread contributes to the fears of job losses
among white collar workers. A study conducted by the University of Maryland found
that, in the United States, among those with incomes over $100,000, the percentage
actively supporting free trade slid from 57% in 1999 to 28% in January 2004 (Rajan
and Wei, 2004).
Whether there is any basis for this fear of job losses has not been carefully
examined. Besides newspaper articles, which are largely based on management
consultant reports, there is very little empirical research on service outsourcing. We
present an overview of the literature in Section 3. The growth of service outsourcing
and its effects on job losses deserve closer attention for a number of reasons. First,
there does appear to be a backslide in support for free trade policies, particularly
among white-collar workers. The fear of losing one’s job is of concern in itself, as it
could lead to lobbying for protectionist type policies. For example, in Australia there
were news reports of lobbies by Australian software companies to restrict (other)
Australian firms’ ability to outsource software designs to India. In the United States,
the Senate passed restrictions on foreign outsourcing for federal contracts in March
2004 (though they did not become law). Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia
Freund and Weinhold (2002) find that Internet penetration, measured by the number of
Internet hosts in a country, has a
positive and significant effect on services trade.
Hewitt stated that the United Kingdom would not pass protectionist legislation (see
Financial Times, 5 March 2004, p. 6). If support for protectionist policies increases, this
may not continue to be their stance. Second, even though we may expect service
outsourcing to lead to long-run benefits, there may be adjustment costs in the form
of job losses. Many theoretical trade models assume full employment and perfect
factor mobility between sectors, but rigidities in the labour market can lead to short-
term employment effects. It is important, therefore, to examine whether outsourcing
does lead to job losses and if so, how large these effects are in order to inform the
policy debate on possible relocation assistance programmes.
The main objective of this paper is to investigate and to establish what are the
hypes and what are the facts about service outsourcing. We develop a set of stylized
facts describing the trends in service outsourcing, which we present in Section 4. We
focus on business services and computing and information service trade as these most
closely reflect the service categories that are generally thought of as being outsourced.
Some of our results correct some misleading impressions that one may derive from
the news media, while others complement them. We examine the following questions:
Has service outsourcing exploded in recent years? How does it compare with the level
of material outsourcing? Who are the biggest outsourcers of services? Who are the
biggest recipients of service outsourcing from the rest of the world (the ‘insourcers’)?
And are there job losses arising from service outsourcing at a sectoral level? Our data
serve to address on a factual basis some of the assertions made in the press coverage.4
A number of interesting results emerge. We show that service outsourcing has been
steadily increasing but is still at very low levels. For example, in the United States,
imports of computing and business services as a share of GDP were only 0.4% in
2003. This share has roughly doubled each decade – from 0.1% in 1983 to 0.2% in
1993, and to 0.4% in 2003, based on IMF’s balance of payments trade data. A
similar picture emerges from industry level outsourcing intensity ratios, which we
constructed using input/output coefficients. These show that material outsourcing is
at much higher levels than service outsourcing.
Interestingly, in the United States and in many other industrial countries, exports
of these services are greater than imports. The United States has a net surplus in
services and this surplus has been increasing in recent years. This highlights that
trade in services, like trade in goods, is a two-way street. In value terms the United
States is the largest importer and exporter of combined computing and business
services. When scaled by GDP, however, the proportion of outsourcing-type trade in
the United States is low compared with the rest of the world. Based on 2002 figures,
its share of imports of business services as a proportion of its GDP ranks 117th in the
world, with the United Kingdom ranking 85th. In comparison, China, which ranked
99th in the world, is ahead of the United States. The countries with the highest
4 Of course there may be other reasons why there is opposition to outsourcing, such as its
potential effects on wages, income
distribution and terms of trade. However, providing an overall welfare assessment is not
possible with the available data.
ratio of imports of business services to GDP are Angola, the Republic of Congo,
Mozambique and Ireland.
The second main contribution of the paper is provided in Section 5, where we

analyze the effects of service and material outsourcing on employment, using the
United Kingdom as a case study. We do not find any evidence to suggest that
outsourcing has led to employment losses in those sectors that increased their
outsourcing intensity in the United Kingdom, during the period 1995 to 2001, in either
the manufacturing or the services sectors. In Section 6 we present our conclusions.
2. WHAT’S IN A NAME?
The use of the term outsourcing has not been standardized. Outsourcing generally
refers to the procuring of material inputs or services by a firm from outside the firm.
Outsourcing can be domestic or international. Examples of domestic outsourcing
would include a Detroit-based automobile company that contracts out the production
of some of its parts to a firm in Cleveland, Ohio; or its employee food service to a
local restaurant which in turn provides the service on the site of the auto firm. Issues
relating to domestic outsourcing have not featured prominently in the media. The
main concern in the public debate is mostly about international outsourcing,
particularly the outsourcing by firms in advanced economies to firms located in low-
wage countries.
In this paper, we focus on international outsourcing, defined as the procuring of

service or material inputs by a firm from a source in a foreign country. This term
includes both intra-firm international outsourcing (by which the foreign provider of
the input is still owned by the firm) and arm’s-length international outsourcing (by
which the foreign provider of the input is independent from the firm using the input).
International outsourcing is part of a country’s imports (of goods and services).
Interestingly, the earliest use of the word ‘outsource’ that we have traced appears
to refer to international outsourcing of services. According to the Oxford English
Dictionary (http://dictionary.oed.com), the earliest use was about the British auto
industry contracting out engineering design work to Germany and appeared in an
article in 1979 in the Journal of Royal Society of Arts, Vol. CXXVII, 141/1.5,6 For
whatever reason, many other early uses of the terms ‘outsource’ and ‘outsourcing’
also tend to be related to the automobile industry, though they could refer to material
inputs as well as services. The earliest use of the terms in the United States that can
be traced electronically, according to FACTIVA, appeared in the Harvard Business
Review in 1980, and in a major US newspaper in 1981.
5 The original sentence stated: ‘We are so short of professional engineers in the motor
industry that we are having to outsource
design work to Germany.

’
6 There are interesting historical examples of outsourcing much earlier than 1979, for
example when the British military used
German mercenaries to fight US revolutionaries. Our focus here is on outsourcing
services related to the production process.
Another commonly used term for international outsourcing is offshoring. The
word ‘offshore’ has a long history and can be traced at least to 1895, according to
the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary. It means ‘moving away from the
shore’ or ‘foreign’. Using ‘offshoring’ to refer to international outsourcing in the way
we have defined above has a much shorter history.
The word ‘insourcing’ was once used to refer to the production of something inside
a company that it used to contract out.7 In this paper, we define it as outsourcing in
the opposite direction (from foreign-located firms to domestic firms). For example, the
phrase US ‘insourcing’ refers to the outsourcing from the rest of the world to the
United States.
3. RELATED LITERATURE
This section reviews the literature on outsourcing. It starts with a discussion of empirical
studies on material and service outsourcing, and then moves on to the relevant
theoretical models.
3.1. Empirical
In the empirical literature, while there is a large set of papers on material input
outsourcing, there is very little on service outsourcing.
3.1.1. Material outsourcing.

A number of papers have studied the evolution of
material outsourcing in the United States and other member countries of the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) – for example, see
Feenstra and Hanson (1996), Campa and Goldberg (1997), Hummels et al. (2001),
Yeats (2001), Hanson et al. (2004), and Borga and Zeile (2004). Generally, these
studies found a steady increase in the extent of international outsourcing of material
inputs (measured in different ways by different authors) over time. For example, Yeats
(2001) estimates that 30% of OECD exports of machinery and transport equipment
comprised parts and components in 1995, and 26% in 1978. This share is the highest
for the United States and increased from 36% in 1978 to 40% in 1995; in Europe it
increased from 26% to 28%; and in Japan from 15% to 26%. However, when looking
at the share of components imported in apparent consumption of transport and
machinery for 1995, the EU shows the highest share at 16% (these being components
imported from outside the EU) compared to 11% for North America and 8%
in Japan.
7 The earliest use that we have traced (using FACTIVA) appeared in an article by Dale
Buss in the 20 July 1984 issue of the
Wall Street Journal, ‘Whether Ford, GM Keep Small-Car Output in U.S. May Hinge on
Firms’ Labour Talks’. The original
sentence reads, ‘. . . Ford’s Mr. Pestillo says that the company could eventually become
efficient enough to “insource” production
of such things as manual transmissions, which it currently purchases from the outside.’
Note that, as in the case of early uses of
‘outsourcing’, this term was also used in association with the auto industry.
SERVICE OUTSOURCING
In addition to examining the magnitude and trends in material outsourcing, the

literature has studied their effects on productivity and the wage skill premium.
Egger and Egger (2001) find that there is a negative effect of international material
outsourcing on the productivity of low-skilled workers in the short run, but a positive
effect in the long run. They found that international outsourcing of materials
contributed to 3.3% of real value added per low-skilled worker in the EU from 1993
to 1997. They attribute the negative short-run effect to imperfections in the EU
labour and goods markets.
Several papers have studied the effect of international outsourcing of material

inputs on the wage skill premium. By relocating the unskilled-intensive parts of the
production process from relatively skill abundant countries to unskilled-abundant
countries, outsourcing is expected to increase the relative demand for skilled labour in
the skill-abundant country and hence increase the skill premium. Empirical evidence
in the United States (Feenstra and Hanson, 1996, 1999) and the United Kingdom
(Hijzen et al., 2002) confirm this finding. Feenstra and Hanson (1999) show that
outsourcing contributed between 17.5 to 40% of the increase in the non-production
wage share over the period 1979 to 1990. Feenstra and Hanson (1997) also show that
liberalized foreign investment and trade led to an increase in the skill premium in
Mexico too. The foreign assembly plants located on the border were created by US
firms outsourcing their less skill-intensive parts, which are more skill intensive relative
to other industries in Mexico.
3.1.2. Service outsourcing.

The literature becomes much thinner when it comes
to international outsourcing of services. Focusing on the information technology (IT)
sector in the United States, Mann (2004) argues that international outsourcing of IT
hardware led to a fall of 10 to 30% in prices of IT hardware, which translated into
higher productivities in all sectors that use IT hardware. Mann then argues that IT
software – a form of international outsourcing of services – should be expected to
benefit the economy in the same way as IT hardware. Furthermore, if one assumes
that IT software is more price elastic than IT hardware, then the expected productivity
gains could be even higher. Finally, Mann documented that IT industries had
exhibited high job growth, so the international outsourcing did not appear to hurt
job growth in that sector.
Amiti and Wei (2004), using data on all manufacturing industries in the United
States, find that service outsourcing is positively correlated with labour productivity
in the United States but material outsourcing is insignificant. Gorg and Hanley (2003)
show that international outsourcing of services had a positive impact on productivity
in the electronics industry in Ireland between 1990 and 1995. They also found that
outsourcing of tangible inputs did not have a significant effect on productivity during
this period. Girma and Gorg (2004) find positive evidence of service outsourcing on
labour productivity and total factor productivity in the United Kingdom between 1980
and 1992, but they are unable to distinguish between domestic and foreign outsourcing.
MARY AMITI AND SHANG-JIN WEI
Studies on service outsourcing and employment effects have mainly been conducted
by management consultants. For example, McKinsey Global Institute’s report (2003)
is a widely quoted study on service outsourcing. It makes a prediction on the number
of jobs likely to be lost due to outsourcing from 2003 to 2015 and computes the
distribution of gains between the country that does the outsourcing and the one that
receives the outsourcing. The underlying methodology used to make the calculations
is not entirely transparent in the report, making it difficult to assign standard errors
to the estimates. The McKinsey report also makes the point that the amount of job
losses due to outsourcing is a relatively trivial share of overall job losses during the
normal course of a business cycle. Brainard and Litan (2004) provide an overview of
these studies, and focus on the distributional effects of outsourcing, pointing out that
it is the low paid jobs that are being replaced with higher paid jobs. They also provide
a number of policy prescriptions for the United States. Shultz (2004) provides some
indirect evidence of job losses related to service outsourcing and concludes that the
effect is very small.
A more rigorous study of the effects of service outsourcing on employment is

provided in Amiti and Wei (2005) using US data. This study also concludes that there
is a small negative effect of service outsourcing on employment when using highly
disaggregated data. Some details of that study are provided in Section 5 of this paper.
3.2. Theoretical
Although there is a rich body of literature that models a firm’s decision on where
to locate different parts of the production stage, all these models assume perfect
inter-sectoral labour mobility so they do not make predictions of net job losses at the
economy level. For example, Jones and Kierzkowski (1990, 1991, and 2001), Dixit
and Grossman (1984), Krugman and Venables (1995), Deardorff (1998a and b), Yi
(2003) and Amiti (2005) develop models of where different parts of the production
stage will be located. When trade costs or technological progress leads to international
fragmentation of different parts of the production stage, firms engage in input trade,
and this can be thought of as part of outsourcing. These are models of non-integrated
firms, where different firms own different production stages, and hence the type of
trade that takes place is referred to as arm’s-length trade. Outsourcing can also take
place between vertically integrated firms, such as in Helpman’s (1984) model of
vertical foreign direct investment, which is referred to as intra-firm trade.8 Antras
(2003) introduces incomplete contracts to study ownership decision (whether firms
should own the plants producing intermediate inputs or not); and Antras and Helpman
(2003) combine the ownership decision with the decision on whether intermediate
8 This slicing up of the production chain across different countries has also been referred
to in the literature as international
production sharing, globalized production, de-localization, fragmentation, intra-product
specialization, intra-mediate trade, and
offshoring. Intra-firm international outsourcing has also been related to vertical foreign
direct investment, and vertical specialization.
SERVICE OUTSOURCING
input producing plants should be located abroad or not. In all of these models, the
focus is on the outsourcing of material inputs but these could, in principle, be
reinterpreted as service inputs.
Trade economists generally assume full employment and perfect factor mobility
between sectors within a country, for example, as in the Heckscher–Ohlin (H–O)
model, so then all the action is on factor prices, that is, the net economy-wide
employment effects are essentially assumed away. And in this kind of model you do
not need to have a large amount of trade to affect factor prices. All you need is for
goods prices to change, which then affect factor prices (i.e. Samuelson–Stolper
theorem). These international price changes can arise for many reasons. For example,
the threat of foreign competition in itself can drive down goods prices even if the
trade does not take place.
The H–O model is generally considered to be a long-run model, that is, with
factors perfectly mobile. So in this model trade can lead to sectoral employment
changes as one sector contracts and another expands but no net economy-wide job
losses. In the short run, there may be rigidities that prevent perfect factor mobility
and hence give rise to net employment effects. For example, Sachs and Shatz (1994)
argue that any of the following factors could give rise to net employment losses in
manufacturing: ‘(i) low-wage workers have a positively sloped supply elasticity, so that
a decline in their wage leads to a decline in labour force participation; (2) low-wage
workers are unionized, and unions maintain wages above full-employment levels; or
(3) low-wage workers have alternative employment opportunities in non-manufacturing

(such as services), so that they leave the manufacturing sector entirely when international
competition puts downward pressure on wages.’ Krugman (1995) presents an
H–O model with rigid factor prices to show how trade can give rise to big employment
effects. If one were to also introduce frictions in inter-sectoral labour mobility then
these effects would be even larger.9
4. GLOBAL PATTERNS OF SERVICE OUTSOURCING: THE UNTOLD STORIES
IN THE MEDIA
In this section, we document a set of features about patterns of global service trade
that have been under-reported or misreported by news media. Specifically, we aim to
address the following questions. Is there a discrete and abrupt rise in service outsourcing
in industrialized economies in recent years? What is the relative importance of
service outsourcing versus material outsourcing? Who are the biggest outsourcers of
services in the world? Who are the biggest recipients of service outsourcing from the
rest of the world?
9 The McKinsey report indicated that more than 69% of workers who lost jobs due to
imports in the United States between
1979 and 1999 were re-employed (this is based on US Bureau of Labour Statistics data).
Of course, this means that 31% were
not re-employed, highlighting that there may be some rigidities in the labour market.
We first provide a description of the data used to measure outsourcing before

moving on to the results.
4.1. Measurement of outsourcing

Outsourcing is generally difficult to measure because information on which parts of
the production stage are contracted out is not readily available, so we need to rely on
indirect measures. We construct two different types of measures of outsourcing. The
first is an economy-wide measure based on imports of computing (which includes
computer software designs) and other business services (which include accounting and
other back-office operations), using data from the IMF’s Balance of Payments Statistics
Yearbook, which in turn is compiled from the reports to the IMF by the national
authorities of member countries. This is the main data source we use to explore
patterns of cross-border services trade.
We chose to focus on trade in computing and information and other business services
because these are the categories that most likely encompass outsourcing activities. The
other categories, such as travel and education, are less likely to include such activities
so we excluded them from the study. We would expect that business services should
predominantly comprise inputs used by firms, but the computing category is likely to
include a higher component of final consumer purchases. However, it is impossible
to specify exactly how much of the trade is in final consumer services. As a robustness
check, at least for the US data, we compared the trends in the IMF statistics with those
provided by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). The BEA splits services trade
by affiliates and non-affiliates. The affiliate trade is undertaken by multinational
corporations, between parents and affiliates, so more closely reflects outsourcing trade.
We
found that the trends for affiliate trade are similar to those indicated by the IMF data.
The second measure of service outsourcing is calculated on an industry basis

for the United Kingdom, as Feenstra and Hanson (1996, 1999) do for material inputs
for the United States. For a given industry i, its outsourced services as a share of total
non-energy inputs, OSSi, is calculated as follows:
Inputpurchaseof servicebyindustry
Total nonenergy inputs used by industry
.
.
.
.
.
.
Imports of service
Production+Imports
Exports
OSS
.
.
=
(1)
The first square bracketed term is calculated using input/output tables. The denominator
includes all non-energy material inputs, listed in Table A2 of the Appendix,
plus the following five service industries: communication, financial, insurance, other
business services, and computing and information.10
10 These five service categories were chosen to match the IMF balance of payments trade
in services data. The employment service
data we use in the next section is more disaggregated. There we include nine service
categories, which are also listed in Appendix 2.
.
.
SERVICE OUTSOURCING
Table 1. United Kingdom: Outsourcing of services
Services Share of service Import of service j

Mean Std Dev Min Max
1992
Communication 0.0153 0.0373 0.0012 0.2937 0.0587
Financial 0.0330 0.0247 0.0072 0.2000 0.0173
Insurance 0.0137 0.0103 0.0027 0.0758 0.0186
Other business service 0.1261 0.1615 0.0196 0.7226 0.0503
Computer and Information 0.0112 0.0185 0.0012 0.0916 0.0148
2001
Communication 0.0158 0.0393 0.0022 0.3175 0.0547
Financial 0.0306 0.0198 0.0055 0.1440 0.0420
Insurance 0.0123 0.0060 0.0018 0.0322 0.0230
Other business service 0.1536 0.1872 0.0228 0.8012 0.0659
Computer and Information 0.0211 0.0302 0.0027 0.1543 0.0283
Source: Input-Output Tables-United Kingdom National Accounts and IMF, Balance of

Payments Statistics Yearbook.
The second square bracketed term is calculated using international trade data
from the IMF’s Balance of Payments Statistics Yearbooks. Unfortunately, imports of
each
input by industry are unavailable. As a proxy, an economy-wide import share is
applied to each industry. To illustrate, the UK economy imported 6.6% of business
services in 2001. We then assume that each industry (in the manufacturing and
service sectors) imports 6.6% of the business services used in that year. On average,
a UK industry uses 15.4% of business services as a proportion of total non-energy
material inputs. So the outsourcing intensity of business services for a typical industry
would be 0.15*0.066 = 1%. We then aggregate across the five service inputs to get
the average service outsourcing intensity for each industry. The breakdown of the two
components of the outsourcing intensity ratio for each service category is provided
for 1992 and 2001 in Table 1. The first column shows the average intensity of each
service category (the first term in Equation 1) and the last column gives the average
import intensity of each service category (the second term in Equation 1). We see
from column 1 that business services is the largest service category used across
manufacturing and service industries, and this has grown from an average of 12.6%
in 1991 to 15.4% in 2001. There is also much variation between industries. For
example, in 2001, in the ‘basic precious and non-ferrous metals’ industry business
services only accounted for 2% of total inputs whereas in the tobacco industry it was
48%. From Table 1, we see that the average share of computing and information
services also increased over the period whereas the other three categories remained
roughly constant. From the last column, we see that the import share of each service
category increased over the period except communications, which remained roughly
unchanged. The largest import share was in business services, at 6.6%.
An analogous measure is constructed for material outsourcing for each industry i,
denoted OSMi. In total, our sample consists of 78 industries (69 manufacturing
industries and 9 service industries).
A number of potential problems with our outsourcing measures should be noted.

First, they are likely to underestimate the value of outsourcing because the cost of
importing services is likely to be lower than the cost of purchasing them domestically.
So it would be preferable to have quantity data rather than current values but this is
unavailable for the United Kingdom. Second, applying the same import share to all
industries is not ideal, but given the unavailability of imports by industry this is our
‘best guess’. The same strategy was used by Feenstra and Hanson (1996, 1999) to
construct measures of material outsourcing. This approach apportions a higher value
of imported inputs to the industries that are the biggest users of those inputs.
Although this seems reasonable, without access to actual import data by industry it
is impossible to say how accurate it is. Third, the total use of inputs by industry only
includes those inputs purchased from a different industry so services produced within
the industry are not included, hence the extent of outsourcing is unlikely to be
precisely measured. Despite these limitations, we believe that combining the input use
information with trade data provides a reasonable proxy of the proportion of services
imported from abroad.
4.2. Outsourcing trends in developed countries

International outsourcing of services has increased in the United States but still
remains low, based on our economy-wide measure using IMF international trade
data. Imports of computer and information plus other business services as a share of
GDP were only 0.4% in 2003. This share has roughly doubled in each decade – from
0.1% in 1983 to 0.2% in 1993, and to 0.4% in 2003. The United Kingdom has a
higher outsourcing ratio than the United States – at 0.9% in 1983, 0.7% in 1993,
and 1.2% in 2003.
A similar picture emerges from industry level outsourcing intensity ratios. Figure 2
presents the average outsourcing intensity ratios across manufacturing and service
industries, weighted by output, from 1992 to 2001. These ratios indicate that on
average the share of service imports in the United Kingdom increased from 1.4% in
1992 to 2.6% in 2001. These figures are higher than those for the United States,
which increased from 0.6% to 0.9% over the same period (see Amiti and Wei, 2005).
But in both cases there is clearly an upward trend.
Material outsourcing intensities are significantly higher than service outsourcing in

both the United Kingdom and United States. Material outsourcing is around 27%
in the United Kingdom and 11% in the United States. From Figure 2, we see that
in the United Kingdom material outsourcing peaked in 1996 and has been on a
downward trend since then. In the United States it has been steadily increasing but
at a slower pace than service outsourcing.
SERVICE OUTSOURCING
Figure 2. United Kingdom: Outsourcing intensity of intermediate inputs

(weighted average across all industries by outputs)
Source: Input-Output Tables-United Kingdom National Accounts and IMF, Balance of

Payments Statistics Yearbook.
In sum, service outsourcing is much lower than material outsourcing, but it is

increasing at a faster pace.
4.3. Which countries are the biggest outsourcers?

Media reports might give the impression that outsourcing is mostly about the United
States and other industrialized countries contracting out services to India and a few
other developing countries. This is not entirely correct.
To set the record straight, we look at the trade data in two categories of services
that have been most intensely reported: computer and information services and other
business services. In value terms, other business services (which we will refer to as just
business services) are by far the larger of the two categories.
Table 2. Who are the biggest absolute outsourcers, 2002?a
Million US Dollars
Rank Country Business services Rank Country Computer and

information services
1 United States 40,929 1 Germany 6,124
2 Germany 39,113 2 United Kingdom 2,602
3 Japan 24,714 3 Japan 2,148
4 Netherlands 21,038 4 Netherlands 1,586
5 Italy 20,370 5 Spain 1,572
6 France 19,111 6 United States 1,547
9 United Kingdom 16,184 9 France 1,150
11 India 11,817 10 China, P.R. 1,133
18 China, P.R. 7,957 14 Russia 592
20 Russia 4,583
Note: aFor India, information on computer and information services is not given in the
IMF Balance of Payments Yearbook.
Source: IMF, Balance of Payments Statistics Yearbook.
Using data for 2002, the latest year for which internationally comparable data
were available, the top outsourcers of business services in dollar amounts are United
States (US$41 billion), Germany (US$39 billion), followed by a group of countries
with trade approximately of the same order of magnitude, Japan ($25 billion), the
Netherlands (US$21 billion), Italy (US$20 billion), France (US$19 billion), and the
United Kingdom (US$16 billion). Interestingly, India and China – two countries that
have been portrayed as major recipients of outsourcing in the media – are themselves
significant outsourcers of business services (with a value of US$11 billion for India
and US$8 billion for China, and ranked 11th and 18th in the world, respectively).
Table 2 lists the value of imports for these services for selected countries with their
rankings in the world.11
In the categories of computer and information services (which is quantitatively

an order of magnitude smaller than business services), the top five importers are
Germany, United Kingdom, Japan, the Netherlands and Spain. The United States
is a close 6th. China is ranked at 10th place. Unfortunately, there is no data from
the IMF’s Balance of Payments Statistics Yearbook for India on trade in computer and
information services.
Of course, larger economies naturally trade more than smaller ones. Therefore, to
get a sense of the importance of outsourcing for a local economy, it is important to
scale the value of imports by the size of the economy. For example, if one scales
imports of business services by local GDP, none of the countries mentioned above
would appear in the top ten list. In fact, smaller economies like Angola, the Republic
of Congo, Mozambique, Ireland and Vanuatu turn out to be much more outsourcing-
intensive, with the ratio of imported business services to GDP exceeding 10%. In
11 An electronic Appendix with rankings of all countries is available on the Economic

Policy website.
SERVICE OUTSOURCING
Table 3. Who are the biggest relative outsourcers (2002)?a

A. Ratio to Local GDP (%)

1 Angola 35.01 1 Cyprus 2.06
2 Congo, Republic of 22.33 2 Luxembourg 1.25
3 Mozambique 17.41 3 Moldova 0.71
4 Ireland 15.44 4 Belgium 0.57
5 Vanuatu 14.22 5 Guyana 0.48
44 India 2.40 13 Germany 0.31
57 Germany 1.96 29 Russia 0.17
74 France 1.33 30 United Kingdom 0.17
75 Russia 1.33 43 China, P.R. 0.09
85 United Kingdom 1.03 48 France 0.08
99 China, P.R. 0.63 57 Japan 0.05
103 Japan 0.62 73 United States 0.01
117 United States 0.39
B. Ratio to Value-added of Local Service Sector (%)

1 Angola 138.67 1 Luxembourg 1.60
2 Congo, Republic of 79.81 2 Moldova 1.43
3 Papua New Guinea 35.12 3 Guyana 1.19
4 Mozambique 33.33 4 Ireland 0.81
5 Ireland 28.28 5 Belgium 0.79
37 India 4.96 12 Germany 0.45
59 Germany 2.90 26 Russia 0.31
70 Russia 2.37 29 China, P.R. 0.27
78 China, P.R. 1.87 33 United Kingdom 0.23
80 France 1.86 53 France 0.11
90 United Kingdom 1.44 59 Japan 0.08
104 Japan 0.93 74 United States 0.02
115 United States 0.53
Note: a There is no separate information on computer and information services in the

balance of payments of India.
contrast, the United States has an outsourcing ratio in business services less than half
of a percent of its GDP (ranked 117th in the world), and the United Kingdom slightly
over 1% of its GDP (ranked 85th). As a comparison, India imports a larger amount
of business services as a share of GDP (2.4%) than the United States and the United
Kingdom. Table 3A lists the share of imports of services as a proportion of local GDP
and their ranks. The country rankings are almost the same if one scales the value of
service imports by local total service value-added. See Table 3B.
In sum, the notion that large industrialized countries outsource more intensely
than other economies is not supported by the trade data.
4.4. Who are the biggest ‘insourcers’?

Like trade in goods, trade in services is a two-way street. Most countries receive
outsourcing of services from other countries as well as outsource to other countries.
Table 4. Who are the biggest absolute insourcers (2002)?a
Million US Dollars

1 United States 58,794 1 Ireland 10,426
2 United Kingdom 36,740 2 United Kingdom 5,675
3 Germany 27,907 3 United States 5,431
4 France 20,864 4 Germany 5,185
5 Netherlands 20,074 5 Spain 2,487
6 India 18,630 10 France 1,191
8 Japan 17,401 11 Japan 1,140
14 China, P.R. 10,419 12 China, P.R. 638
29 Russia 2,012 25 Russia 137

balance of payments of
India.
Given the high level of aggregation in the services data it is not clear whether
countries are actually importing and exporting exactly the same service. These could
in fact differ substantially in their factor intensities. For example, within the business
services category you might have call centres that may only require high school
training as well as accounting services that require tertiary training. But it is also quite
likely that there is two-way trade in the same services due to the differentiated nature
of the service, just as models of intra-industry trade in goods. For example, services
traded could be in French and Indian translation.
In recent times, the word ‘insourcing’ has been used as a shorthand for the amount
of outsourcing a country receives from the rest of the world. We use exports of
business and computing services as a proxy for insourcing.
Who are the biggest insourcers or the recipients of global outsourcing? From
Table 4, we see that the top five recipients in 2002 in dollar terms are the United
States (US$59 billion), the United Kingdom (US$37 billion), Germany (US$28
billion), France (US$21 billion), and the Netherlands (US$20 billion). India, a country
that has received the most media attention as a recipient of outsourcing, is ranked at
6th place (US$18.6 billion); and China is ranked at 14th place (US$10 billion). It is
worth emphasizing that India is one of the biggest exporters of business services
in the world but there are five industrialized countries ahead of it. The data show
that the top recipients of global service outsourcing tend to be rich, industrialized
countries, rather than poor developing countries.
However, if one scales the value of exports by the size of local GDP, smaller
economies turn out to be more insourcing-intensive than the larger ones. For example,
from Table 5 we see that the top three insource-intensive economies are Vanuatu,
Singapore and Hong Kong SAR, each with exporting services as a share of local
GDP exceeding 10%. By this metric, India is somewhat more insourcing-intensive
SERVICE OUTSOURCING
Table 5. Who are the biggest relative insourcers, 2002?a
Rank Economy Business services Rank Economy Computer and

A. Ratio to Local GDP (%)
1 Vanuatu 17.13 1 Ireland 8.54
2 Singapore 14.98 2 Cyprus 2.19
3 Hong Kong SAR 11.53 3 Luxembourg 1.09
4 Papua New Guinea 10.55 4 Costa Rica 0.91
5 Luxembourg 9.78 5 Belgium 0.76
21 India 3.79 17 United Kingdom 0.36
33 United Kingdom 2.35 24 Germany 0.26
50 France 1.45 42 France 0.08
54 Germany 1.40 49 United States 0.05
79 China, P.R. 0.82 51 China, P.R. 0.05
88 Russia 0.58 54 Russia 0.04
90 United States 0.56 59 Japan 0.03
95 Japan 0.44
B. Ratio to Value-added of Local Service Sector (%)
1 Papua New Guinea 32.95 1 Ireland 15.64
2 Vanuatu 23.85 2 Guyana 1.50
3 Singapore 21.93 3 Costa Rica 1.46
4 Swaziland 16.06 4 Luxembourg 1.40
5 Hong Kong SAR 13.46 5 Armenia 1.09
13 India 7.82 18 United Kingdom 0.51
44 United Kingdom 3.28 24 Germany 0.38
53 China, P.R. 2.45 38 China, P.R. 0.15
64 Germany 2.07 42 France 0.12
66 France 2.03 51 Russia 0.07
87 Russia 1.04 52 United States 0.07
91 United States 0.76 60 Japan 0.04
94 Japan 0.66

balance of payments of India.
than the United Kingdom (3.8% of GDP vs. 2.4%); and China is somewhat ahead
of the United States (0.8% of GDP vs. 0.6%).
4.5. Who are the biggest surplus countries?

At this point, it is natural to consider the balance of payments implications of service
outsourcing. Are industrialized economies more likely to run a deficit in services trade
than developing countries? The answer is a resounding no. In fact, the largest surplus
countries of combined computing and business services in the world are the United
Kingdom and the United States.
Figure 3 plots the time series of the US imports, exports, and the net balance of business
services. Table 6 ranks countries in terms of exports of business services and computing,
and net balance, respectively. We note that the United States has been running a surplus
in this service category every year since 1980, as does the United Kingdom. They are
Figure 3. Insourcing and outsourcing of business services (billion dollars)
Source: IMF, Balance of Payments Statistics Yearbook and International Financial

Statistics.
in fact, the largest and the second largest surplus countries in the world, respectively. In
other words, if every country reduced its overall service outsourcing, the United States
and the United Kingdom would be the biggest two losers in terms of net dollars lost
in service trade. The US current account deficit would become bigger, not smaller.
However, the patterns for other industrialized countries are more varied. For
example, in business services, Germany has been running a small deficit every year
throughout our sample, between 1980 and 2001. France had been consistently
running a small surplus until the end of the sample when it switches to a mild deficit.
SERVICE OUTSOURCING
Table 6. Who are the biggest surplus and deficit countries, 2002?a
Rank Economy Business Rank Economy Computer and Rank Economy Total
services information
services
Surplus countries Surplus countries Surplus countries
1 United 20,555.96 1 Ireland 9,882.71 1 United 23,628.68

Kingdom Kingdom
2 United 17,864.30 2 United 3,884.00 2 United 21,748.30
States States States
3 Hong 15,424.54 3 United 3,072.72 3 Hong 15,663.41
Kong SAR Kingdom Kong SAR

4 India 6,813.44 4 Canada 1,077.12 4 India 6,813.44
5 Singapore 3,826.12 5 Spain 914.65 5 Singapore 3,826.12
6 China, 2,462.05 15 France 41.39 9 China, 1,967.20
P.R. P.R.
10 France 1,752.32 10 France 1,793.70
Deficit countries Deficit countries Deficit countries
135 Russia -2,570.90 95 Russia -454.30 137 Russia -3,025.20

139 Korea -4,450.90 96 China, -494.85 139 Italy -4,001.71
P.R.
140 Japan -7,313.51 97 Italy -674.85 140 Korea -4,555.30
141 Indonesia -7,985.71 98 Germany -939.29 141 Indonesia -7,985.71
142 Germany -11,205.43 99 Japan -1,007.74 142 Japan -8,321.25
143 Ireland -13,882.01 100 Brazil -1,118.10 143 Germany -12,144.72
Note: a Positive numbers in this table represent net insourcing of services (surplus), and
negative numbers
represent net outsourcing (deficit).
There does not seem to be a consistent pattern of a country being in net surplus or
deficit in business services solely based on the level of development. For example, in
India, imports and exports of business services were fairly balanced in much of the
early part of the sample. However, starting from 1996, exports have really taken off,
surpassing imports by an ever widening margin, resulting in a reasonably large
surplus position today. For China, the relative size of imports and exports of business
services alternates between periods, though it ends the sample with a small surplus.
Figure 4 plots time series of imports, exports and the trade balance in computer
and information services. The patterns are broadly similar to trade in business services,
with both the United States and United Kingdom showing a net surplus, and China
alternating between a surplus and deficit. The new feature in computing trends
relative to business services is that Ireland is the largest surplus country in computing.
To sum up, the presumption that global service trade is dominated by lopsided
one-way outsourcing from developed countries to developing countries is not
supported by the data. If anything, several major industrialized countries, notably the
United States and the United Kingdom, export more outsourcing type services than
they import from the rest of the world. It is particularly important to note that the
United States and United Kingdom are net exporters of services since the media
seem to equate outsourcing with job losses (and insourcing with job gains). Of course,
Figure 4. Insourcing and outsourcing of computer and information services

(billion dollars)

Statistics.
to assess whether there are in fact any job losses arising from outsourcing we need a
more rigorous analysis, which we turn to in the next section.
5. DOES SERVICE OUTSOURCING REDUCE JOBS?

A factor behind the recent anxiety in advanced economies over service outsourcing
is the fear of losing jobs at home. If labour were perfectly mobile between sectors
SERVICE OUTSOURCING
then a job lost in one sector would be gained in another. However, if there are
rigidities in the labour market then outsourcing could lead to net employment losses,
at least in the short run. In this case, even a small amount of outsourcing could lead
to large job losses. But outsourcing could also lead to job growth. On the one hand,
every job lost is a job lost.12 On the other hand, firms that have outsourced may
become more efficient and expand production, and expand employment in other
lines of work. If firms relocate their relatively inefficient parts of the production
process to another country, where they can be produced more cheaply, they can
expand their output in production stages for which they have comparative advantage.
These productivity benefits can translate into lower prices generating further demand
and hence create more jobs. This job creation effect could in principle offset the
direct job losses due to outsourcing.
As the predictions from the theory are ambiguous, we turn to the data to see if
there are higher job losses in the industries that have increased outsourcing. We
estimate the effects of outsourcing on employment using a common empirical
specification of labour demand (see Hamermesh, 1993) as follows:13
ln Lit = a0 + a1 ln wit + ß ln .it + . ln yit (2)
where w is the wage rate, . is a vector of other input prices, and y is the level of
output. The source of identification of employment in these types of industry labour
demand studies is the assumption that the wage is exogenous to the industry. This
would be the case if labour were mobile across industries. However, if labour were
not perfectly mobile and there were industry specific rents then wages would not
be exogenous. Provided these rents are unchanged over time then they would be
absorbed in the industry fixed effects and the results would be unbiased.
In general, an increase in output would be expected to have a positive effect on

employment demand and an increase in the wage a negative effect, whereas an
increase in the price of other inputs would lead firms to substitute away from the
more expensive inputs towards labour. The question arises as to which input prices
to use for outsourcing. If the firm is a multinational firm deciding on how much
labour to employ at home and abroad then it should be the foreign wage. But not all
of outsourcing takes place within multinational firms and also with outsourcing from
many countries it is unclear which foreign wage to include, if any. Firms that import
inputs at arm’s-length do not care about the foreign wage but instead are concerned
about the price of the imported service. Since prices of imported services were
unavailable we use the outsourcing intensity as an inverse proxy of the price of
imported service inputs, that is, the lower the price of imported service inputs the
12 Note that this would also be true for domestic outsourcing. The main difference is that
the job lost with domestic outsourcing
is necessarily gained in another sector in the domestic economy. But with foreign
outsourcing this job is lost to a foreign country,
hence the focus on international outsourcing.
13 This is derived from a cost function using Shepard’s lemma.

higher the outsourcing intensity. An increase in outsourcing intensity can be interpreted

as a fall in the price of outsourcing. For other input prices, such as the rental
rate on capital, we assume that all firms face the same price, which we assume is some
function of time, r = f(t).
So outsourcing can affect labour demand through two channels. First, there is a
substitution effect through the input price of materials or services. For example, a fall
in the price of services would lead to a fall in the demand for labour if labour and
services are substitutes. Second, outsourcing can affect the demand for employment
through output effects. An increase in outsourcing can make the firm more efficient
and competitive, increasing demand for its output and hence labour – that is,
increases in efficiency could lead to lower prices for a firm’s output that results in
increased demand for output, which in turn increases derived demand for labour. Of
course, if outsourcing leads to efficiency gains, this could also result in a reduction in
demand for labour since the firm could produce the same amount of output with less
inputs. The net effect depends on the size of the productivity gain and the increased
demand for the final good. We will estimate the equation with and without output in
order to allow for the possibility of scale effects.
We take first differences of Equation (2), denoted by ., giving the following

estimating equation,
. ln Lit = a0 + a1. ln wit + ß1. ln OSSit + ß2. ln OSMit + .. ln yit + dDt + eit (3)
where . ln OSSit is the log difference in service outsourcing intensity, and . ln OSMit
is the log difference of material outsourcing intensity. This first difference specification
controls for any time-invariant industry-specific effects such as industry technology
differences. We also include year fixed effects, Dt, to control for any unobserved effect
common across all industries, such as changes in the cost of capital, and in some
specifications we also include industry fixed effects. Some industries may be pioneering
industries that are high growth industries and hence more likely to outsource; and
some industries might be subject to higher technical progress than others. Adding
industry fixed effects to a time differenced equation takes account of these factors,
provided the growth or technical progress is fairly constant over time.
In our companion paper (Amiti and Wei, 2005), we estimate this equation using US
data, where we found the effect on jobs depends crucially on the level of disaggregation.
When the US economy was decomposed into 450 sectors, a faster growth in
outsourcing at a sector level was associated with a small negative growth in jobs in
that sector (i.e., ß1 < 0). However, when the US economy was decomposed into 96
sectors (still very disaggregated but less so than the 450-sector classification), there
was no correlation between job growth and outsourcing growth at the sector level.
These results seem sensible. At sufficiently disaggregated levels, every outsourced job
is a job lost. Hence, job growth and outsourcing may be negatively related. At the
other extreme, for the economy as a whole, outsourcing is likely to change only the
sectoral composition of the jobs, but not necessarily the aggregate level of employment.
SERVICE OUTSOURCING
The interesting finding is that one does not need to aggregate the sectors very much:
even when the US economy is disaggregated into 96 sectors, one can already see
enough creation of new jobs in the outsourcing-intensive sectors that can offset jobs
lost due to outsourcing.
A nagging question is whether the results from the US case are applicable to European
and other advanced economies. Therefore, it would be useful to re-examine this
question for another economy. In this section of the paper, we turn to a case study of
the United Kingdom, which makes an interesting comparison with the United States.
First, as we have shown at the beginning of this paper, the anxiety over service
outsourcing in the United Kingdom is likely to be as high as in the United States, as
indicated by the intensity of news coverage if scaled by the size of the economy.
Second, the United Kingdom actually engages in about three times as much service
outsourcing as a share of its GDP (1.2% in 2001) as the United States (0.4% in 2001).
5.1. Statistical results

The data we use is for the United Kingdom from 1995 to 2001. It includes 69
manufacturing industries and 9 service industries. The employment data is for total
employment. Ideally, we would distinguish between skilled and unskilled workers
given that the concern over job losses appears to be predominantly among white-
collar workers. Unfortunately, the ONS stopped collecting employment and wage
data by skill in 1995, so all our results pertain to total employment by industry. The
list of industries and details of the variables are provided in the Appendix.
To fix ideas, we first look at some examples of sectors with the fastest and the
slowest employment growth and their associated growth in service outsourcing. The
top five and bottom five industries ranked by total employment growth are presented
in Table 7a; and the top five and bottom five industries ranked by service outsourcing
growth are presented in Table 7b. From Tables 7a and 7b, we see that no uniform
pattern emerges between service outsourcing and employment growth. For example,
the ‘other transport equipment’ sector has the second highest growth in employment
and one of the highest growth in service outsourcing, yet the ‘preparation and
spinning of textile fibres’ sector experienced negative employment growth over the
period and was ranked one of the biggest outsourcing sectors. In contrast, both the
‘man made fibre’ and the ‘footwear’ sectors experienced a large decline in employment
growth, yet the ‘man made fibre’ sector experienced high service outsourcing
growth and the ‘footwear’ sector experienced a rapid decline in service outsourcing.
A scatter plot of service outsourcing growth and employment growth for all 78
industries is presented in Figure 5. Summary statistics are presented in Table 8.
In Tables 9 and 10 we present our results using statistical analysis to relate job
growth at a sectoral level to the change in service outsourcing at the same disaggregated
level. Tables 9a and 9b present the results for the manufacturing industries and
Tables 10a and 10b present the results for the service industries. In the first column
Table 7a. United Kingdom: Top five and bottom five sectors of employment growth,
1995–2001a
Industry Total employment Rank of total Service outsourcing Rank of service

growth (%) employment growth intensity growth (%) outsourcing growth
Top Five
Computer and related activities 144.0 1 23.6 53

Other transport equipment 73.9 2 110.0 7
Renting of machinery and equipment 52.9 3 37.0 36
Advertising 52.0 4 31.9 45
Television and radio transmitters 46.5 5 18.5 60
Bottom Five
Preparation and spinning of textile fibers -47.0 74 144.5 4

Knitted and crocheted fabrics and articles -48.2 75 19.9 57
Wearing apparel; dressing and dying of fur -53.4 76 47.6 28
Finishing of textiles -54.0 77 13.4 66
Footwear -69.0 78 -34.7 78
Table 7b. United Kingdom: Top five and bottom five sectors of service outsourcing
growth, 1995–2001a
Industry Total employment Rank of total Service outsourcing Rank of service

growth (%) employment growth intensity growth (%) outsourcing growth
Top Five
Man-made fibers -38.9 73 233.2 1

Vegetable and animal oils and fats 3.8 30 181.7 2
Production and distribution of electricity -8.4 48 149.9 3
Preparation and spinning of textile fibers -47.0 74 144.5 4
Cement, lime and plaster -31.3 71 117.5 5
Bottom Five
Medical, precision and optical instruments, watches and clocks 5.2 29 1.6 74
Cutlery, tools and general hardware -6.9 46 -5.4 75
Sports goods, games and toys -23.7 61 -13.9 76
Machine tools -28.2 67 -14.5 77
Footwear -69.0 78 -34.7 78
Note: a Industries in this study are aggregated into 84 sectors, which are based on SIC
(92) 3-digit codes.
Source: Employment data are from the Annual Employment Survey (AES, 1995–1997)
and Annual Business Inquiry (ABI, 1998–2001). Service outsourcing ratios are calculated
from input-output tables.

SERVICE OUTSOURCING
Figure 5. United Kingdom: Service outsourcing growth and employment

growth, 1995–2001

Statistics.
Table 8. United Kingdom: Summary statistics (1995–2001)
Variable Obs. Mean Std. Dev. Min Max

Manufacturing industries
Total employment (thousand) 483 78 147 2 1,340
Nominal output (million pound) 483 7,178 13,366 534 12,6715
Outsourcing intensity of 483 0.503 0.144 0.074 0.978
manufacture input
Outsourcing intensity of service input 483 0.007 0.005 0.002 0.042
Price index (2000=100) 448 101 12 75 237
Real output (million pound) 448 5,499 5,509 502 33,040
Total wage (million pound) 483 1,810 2,826 68 25,900
Service industries
Total employment (thousand) 63 531 512 68 1,715
Nominal output (million pound) 63 34,412 27,048 4,772 120,248
Outsourcing intensity of 63 0.115 0.092 0.043 0.423
manufacture input
Outsourcing intensity of service input 63 0.042 0.009 0.021 0.057
Total wage (million pound) 63 8,571 5,097 1,578 20,407
Source: Refer to the Appendix.
of Table 9a we present the results from estimating Equation (3) using employment for
all manufacturing industries. We also add first period lags to allow for the fact that
the effects may not be instantaneous. This is a conditional labour demand function,
with output held constant. In this specification we see that service outsourcing
appears to have a positive effect on employment. As hypothesized, the wage has a
significant negative effect on employment, and output has a significant positive effect.
Table 9a. United Kingdom: Manufacturing employment and service outsourcing

(1995–2001)
Dependent variable .ln(employment)
Variable One period difference Long time difference

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
.ln(OSS)t
.ln(OSS)t-1
.ln(OSM)t
.ln(OSM)t-1
.ln(wage)t
.ln(wage)t-1
.ln(real output)t
.ln(real output)t-1
.ln( price)t
.ln( price)t-1
0.119**
(0.057)
0.045**
(0.022)
0.069
(0.074)
0.036
(0.068)
-0.704***
(0.038)
0.046
(0.032)
0.398***
(0.062)
0.201***
(0.050)
0.113*
(0.062)
0.021
(0.025)
-0.048
(0.099)
-0.028
(0.088)
-0.739***
(0.041)
0.006
(0.036)
0.163
(0.221)
-0.162
(0.210)
0.103*
(0.059)
0.018
(0.024)
-0.074
(0.088)
-0.026
(0.076)
-0.733***
(0.039)
0.011
(0.033)
0.148
(0.182)
0.143
(0.306)
-0.466**
(0.203)
0.622***
(0.177)
0.094
(0.271)
-0.192
(0.623)
-0.683**
(0.292)
0.020
(0.134)
0.083
(0.249)
-0.061
(0.504)
-0.654**
(0.287)
Time fixed effects Yes Yes Yes No No No
Industry fixed effects No No No No No No
N 320 320 345 64 64 69
R2 0.75 0.65 0.64 0.61 0.25 0.22
Notes: Standard errors in parentheses; In columns (4) to (6), all variables are differenced
over the whole period
i.e., .x(t) = x(T ) – x(t)
* p < 0.1; ** p < 0.05; *** p < 0.01

In the second column we substitute in the final goods price for output in order to
allow outsourcing to affect employment through the scale affect. We see that the
coefficient on service outsourcing is still positive but only significant at the 10% level.
Excluding output and price, from the equation in column 3, to allow for scale effects,
gives the same results as in column 2 with prices. All of these specifications indicate
a positive correlation between employment and service outsourcing.
However, there is some concern that taking first time differences might induce
measurement error, particularly when the variables are aggregated at the industry
level. To address this concern, we re-estimate the equations using long time differences
over the whole period, which we present in columns (4), (5) and (6) of Table 9a.14 Now,
we see that service outsourcing has an insignificant effect in all three specifications,
14 See Griliches and Hausman (1986).

SERVICE OUTSOURCING
Table 9b. United Kingdom: Manufacturing employment and service outsourcing
– sensitivity tests (1995–2001)

Variable One period difference

Industry fixed effects Lagged dependent variable
(1) (2) (3) (4)
.ln(OSS )t
.ln(OSS )t-1
.ln(OSM )t
.ln(OSM )t-1
.ln(wage)t
.ln(wage)t-1
.ln(real output)t
.ln(real output)t-1
.ln( price)t
.ln( price)t-1
.ln(employment)t-1
0.090**
(0.036)
0.047**
(0.020)
0.037
(0.073)
0.027
(0.067)
-0.790***
(0.050)
-0.020
(0.041)
0.382***
(0.067)
0.246***
(0.076)
0.085**
(0.041)
0.025
(0.024)
-0.057
(0.092)
-0.030
(0.087)
-0.784***
(0.055)
-0.022
(0.046)
0.116
(0.206)
-0.215
(0.198)
0.118**
(0.056)
0.033
(0.020)
0.078
(0.072)
0.008
(0.074)
-0.705***
(0.043)
0.169*
(0.086)
0.385***
(0.059)
0.131*
(0.072)
0.178*
(0.102)
0.115**
(0.058)
0.004
(0.024)
-0.001
(0.088)
-0.054
(0.081)
-0.738***
(0.047)
0.269***
(0.080)
0.127
(0.208)
-0.149
(0.197)
0.374***
(0.091)
Time fixed effects Yes Yes Yes Yes
Industry fixed effects Yes Yes No No
N 320 320 320 320
R2 0.85 0.81 0.76 0.69
Note: Standard errors in parentheses.
* p < 0.1; ** p < 0.05; *** p < 0.01

although the coefficient remains positive. The magnitudes of the coefficients on wages
and output are a little different but their signs and significance are unchanged.
In Table 9b we conduct further sensitivity analysis to determine whether there is

any effect from service outsourcing on manufacturing employment. There is some
concern that there may be a third factor that could be affecting both labour demand
and outsourcing, and hence causing an upward bias in the coefficient on outsourcing.
Whether there is a potential problem depends on what is causing the change in
outsourcing. If it is a fall in telephone prices then this would only affect employment
through outsourcing so the estimates would be unbiased. However, if it is a technology
shock in, say, computing that might affect labour demand directly, and the shock is
Table 10a. United Kingdom: Service sector employment and service outsourcing
(1995–2001)
Variable One period difference Long time difference

(1) (2) (3) (4)
.ln(OSS )t
.ln(OSS )t-1
.ln(OSM )t
.ln(OSM )t-1
.ln(wage)t
.ln(wage)t-1
.ln(nominal output)t
.ln(nominal output)t-1
-0.027
(0.161)
-0.312*
(0.181)
-0.425***
(0.129)
-0.065
(0.115)
-0.947***
(0.057)
0.126
(0.075)
0.807***
(0.197)
0.130
(0.155)
-0.412**
(0.192)
-0.583**
(0.227)
-0.693***
(0.166)
-0.101
(0.179)
-0.823***
(0.065)
0.113
(0.114)
1.633*
(0.591)
-0.095
(0.131)
-0.683***
(0.070)
1.239***
(0.106)
-0.864
(1.719)
-0.836
(0.653)
-0.779
(0.540)
Time fixed effects Yes Yes No No
Industry fixed effects No No No No
N 45 45 9 9
R2 0.89 0.75 0.97 0.47
Notes: Standard errors in parentheses; In columns (4) to (6), all variables are differenced
over the whole period,
i.e. .x(t) = x(T ) – x(t)

* p < 0.1; ** p < 0.05; *** p < 0.01
correlated with telecommunications, which alters outsourcing as well, then the

estimates might be upwardly biased. Unfortunately, the available data do not allow
us to pinpoint the cause of the changes in outsourcing. So, in order to address this
potential concern we add industry fixed effects to the first differenced specification in
column (1) where we control for output, and in column (2) where we control for price.
These industry fixed effects take account of the differences in unobserved industry
characteristics such as differences in technology that could be driving employment
growth. Again, the service outsourcing coefficients are significant and positive but we
see that the size of the coefficient on service outsourcing is a bit lower. For example,
in column (2), where we allow for scale effects, the coefficient on service outsourcing
falls from 0.11 in Table 9a to 0.085 in Table 9b.15 As a final check, we include a
This implies that a 1% increase in service outsourcing increases employment by 0.08%.

Re-estimating the equations in
columns (1) and (2) in Table 9b with the difference in outsourcing (not logged) we find
that a one percentage point increase in
outsourcing leads to a 12% increase in employment. Given that service outsourcing only
increased by one-third of a percentage
point over the sample period on average in the manufacturing industries, from 0.6% to
0.9%, this implies an average employment increase of 0.6 of a percent per year. But note
that the coefficient is not significant in the long difference estimations.
SERVICE OUTSOURCING
Table 10b. United Kingdom: Service sector employment and service outsourcing
– sensitivity tests (1995–2001)

Variable One period difference

Industry fixed effects Lagged dependent variable
(1) (2) (3) (4)
.ln(OSS )t
.ln(OSS )t-1
.ln(OSM )t
.ln(OSM )t-1
.ln(wage)t
.ln(wage)t-1
.ln(nominal output)t
.ln(nominal output)t-1
.ln(employment)t-1
-0.333***
(0.119)
-0.666***
(0.164)
-0.741***
(0.156)
-0.182
(0.135)
-0.878***
(0.065)
0.222***
(0.060)
0.488***
(0.150)
-0.237
(0.144)
-0.463***
(0.121)
-0.590***
(0.187)
-0.758***
(0.168)
-0.111
(0.147)
-0.849***
(0.067)
0.182**
(0.070)
-0.029
(0.133)
-0.204
(0.168)
-0.249
(0.153)
0.068
(0.105)
-0.892***
(0.063)
0.489***
(0.148)
0.716***
(0.187)
-0.160
(0.162)
0.455***
(0.163)
-0.264
(0.170)
-0.142
(0.188)
-0.271
(0.188)
0.184
(0.122)
-0.804***
(0.062)
0.634***
(0.128)
0.698***
(0.107)
Time fixed effects Yes Yes Yes Yes
Industry fixed effects Yes Yes No No
N
R2
45
0.95
45
0.93
45
0.91
45
0.85
Note: Standard errors in parentheses.
* p < 0.1; ** p < 0.05; *** p < 0.01

lagged dependent variable to take account of persistence. A similar picture emerges

in this specification, with a positive coefficient on service outsourcing. Also note that
the coefficient on material outsourcing is insignificant in all of the specifications for
the manufacturing sectors, although it is sometimes negative.
The main message from Tables 9a and 9b is that outsourcing does not have a
negative effect on manufacturing employment at the sectoral level. There is a positive
significant coefficient on all of the first differenced specifications, although some only
at the 10% level, but this finding is not robust in the long differenced specifications.
Moreover, in none of the specifications did we see a negative coefficient on service
outsourcing. The insignificant effect on employment may be explained by the level of
industry aggregation. For example, a worker may lose her job due to outsourcing but
then find a job in another firm within the same industry classification. So if there is
sufficient job creation within the broadly defined sectors to offset any job loss, then
the job loss effect of outsourcing would not show up in aggregate data.
In Tables 10a and 10b, we present the results for the services industries. All of the
specifications are the same as for the manufacturing industries except we include
nominal output instead of real output because service price indices were unavailable.
Using the one period differenced data in the first two columns of Table 10a, we find
a negative coefficient on service outsourcing. With nominal output the coefficient on
the lagged outsourcing variable is only significant at the 10% level. In the second
column, where we exclude output in order to allow for a scale effect, the coefficient
on service outsourcing is negative and significant at the 5% level. But this effect is
not robust across specifications. For example, in the long differenced time data in
columns (3) and (4) the coefficient is either positive and significant (at the 10% level)
or negative and insignificant. In the sensitivity tests in Table 10b, the effect is negative
and significant in columns (1) and (2) with industry fixed effects, but insignificant
when we include a lagged dependent variable in columns (3) and (4). Similarly, we see
that material outsourcing is negative and significant only in some of the specifications.
So there does not appear to be any robust significant negative effect from service
outsourcing or material outsourcing in service industries, although the effect is
negative and significant in some of the specifications.16
In sum, the statistical results would appear to suggest that jobs displaced by service
outsourcing are likely to be offset by new jobs created in the same sector.
6. CONCLUDING REMARKS
In developed countries, there is a tremendous amount of anxiety over international
outsourcing of services. The anxiety comes in part from the perception one may
obtain from the news media that global service trade is exploding and that it is
dominated by lopsided, one-way outsourcing from developed countries to developing
countries, and that this will lead to massive job losses in countries such as the United
States and United Kingdom.
This paper presents a body of evidence that suggest neither aspect of the anxiety
is well supported by the data. In particular, most developed countries are not generally
more outsourcing-intensive (when adjusted for economic size) than many developing
countries. In any case, many developed countries tend to run surpluses – i.e., the rest
of the world outsources more to them than the reverse – in those categories most
often featured in the news media, for example, business services and computer and
information services. In fact, the United States and the United Kingdom have run
the largest and second largest surpluses in services trade in the world in recent years.
the sample size is much smaller, with only nine industries.

US economy (Amiti and Wei, 2005), we find that a negative effect on employment
can be detected if the economy is decomposed into 450 sectors, but the negative
effect disappears when one looks at slightly broadly defined sectors (96 sectors in the
US economy). These studies show that jobs are not being exported, on net, from
industrial countries to developing countries as a result of outsourcing. In fact, the
evidence suggests that workers who lose jobs in one industry manage to find jobs in
other growing industries.
To conclude, the risk of service outsourcing dramatically reducing job growth in

the advanced economies has been greatly exaggerated.
The first measure has the problem, acknowledged by the authors, that it might
include computer sales to consumers rather than firms and so might be biased. But
both have a more over-riding problem, namely the original source of the data. To
discover this involves penetrating the innards of the relevant statistics agency which
is often hard to do. Fortunately the UK Office of National Statistics has a specific
project on outsourcing and so we can get some idea of the data using Clayton (2004).
The ‘International Trade in Services Survey’ is sent to around 20,000 firms who are
asked about their exports and imports of business services, which such services split
up into categories such as R&D, telecoms, accounting etc. These micro data, which
are not available outside the ONS, are then used to calculate service-specific exports
and imports, and this is the second bracket in the OSS formula used by the authors.
Unfortunately, these data are not provided at an industry and service-specific level,
whereas all services are so provided. This is why the authors are forced to use service-
specific outsourcing ratios that are the same across all industries in the formula above.
How much bias this imparts to the cross-industry variation in outsourcing awaits
calculations using the micro data. At the moment, therefore, the economy-wide data
are likely to be better in quality than the industry-wide data.
The economy-wide data are themselves very interesting. Two points are notable.
First, the UK and USA are substantial receivers of outsourcing. Indeed they are so
much so that they actually run a surplus in services trade. This would surprise many,
I conjecture. Second, industries both outsource and insource at the same time. I
would like to see some discussion of what this suggests for the trade theories that
purport to explain trade in services.
The authors then use the industry specific data to run panel labour demand
equations with employment regressed on wages, outsourcing ratios (a proxy for the
price of outsourcing) and various other controls such as fixed effects, output and time
dummies. Here the authors find that none of the effects of outsourcing are ever
negative, as the prophets of doom might have us believe, and indeed that some are
positive. This motivation for this part of the paper is set out neatly: one needs to
assume that factor prices are exogenous and that there is no technological shock that
both makes outsourcing more feasible and alters labour demand. Nonetheless I think
it would be worth discussing at least two issues. First, what are the issues involved in
trying to isolate a price effect of outsourcing when all that is available is the quantity
of outsourcing (in fact the share of outsourced services in non-energy inputs)? Such
a share is presumably a potentially endogenous variable, chosen by firms in a way
that might reflect both the price of outsourcing but also other factor prices and
technologies. Second, what are the issues involved in using industry data to try to
estimate a production function that presumably refers to a company? Since changes
in an industry refer to changes both on the intensive and extensive margin then the
question of just what the regression coefficient returns is worth considering I think.
If changes are mostly on the intensive margin then the coefficient is more likely to
reflect movement along the isoquant concerned. But if firm opening and closing is
important then the coefficient reflects this instead. We know from micro studies that
opening and closing is a non-negligible part of productivity growth. Whether it is an
important part of the response to outsourcing awaits more detailed micro data.
The paper studies service outsourcing. It is very useful because the subject attracts a
lot of media and political attention. The paper is one of the first empirical studies
dealing seriously with this issue. With the help of descriptive statistics, it first establishes
that service outsourcing is at a very low level (e.g., less than half a percent of
GDP in the USA in 2003) but it is growing. Moreover, until now it has mainly
benefited the trade balance of developed economies. The authors conclude from
their statistical analysis that service outsourcing has a weak positive effect on
manufacturing employment in the UK. The reader is hence induced to believe that
workers in rich economies have nothing to fear from service outsourcing.
If service outsourcing remains at the current level there is indeed nothing to fear.
However, if service outsourcing grows substantially in the future, we need to consider
the possibility that some workers in services are going to get hurt. The paper is
interesting because it is essentially descriptive. This is also a weakness because it
does not analyse the consequence of an increase in service outsourcing.
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B) EXPLAIN HOW A LOWER LEVEL OF VERTICAL INTEGRATION IMPLIES

What is new about outsourcing today is that it is increasingly in services. Although

The second main contribution of the paper is provided in Section 5, where we

In this paper, we focus on international outsourcing, defined as the procuring of

design work to Germany.

3.1.1. Material outsourcing.

In addition to examining the magnitude and trends in material outsourcing, the

Several papers have studied the effect of international outsourcing of material

3.1.2. Service outsourcing.

A more rigorous study of the effects of service outsourcing on employment is

(3) low-wage workers have alternative employment opportunities in non-manufacturing

We first provide a description of the data used to measure outsourcing before

4.1. Measurement of outsourcing

The second measure of service outsourcing is calculated on an industry basis

Total nonenergy inputs used by industry

Table 1. United Kingdom: Outsourcing of services

Services Share of service Import of service j

Source: Input-Output Tables-United Kingdom National Accounts and IMF, Balance of

An analogous measure is constructed for material outsourcing for each industry i,

denoted OSMi. In total, our sample consists of 78 industries (69 manufacturing

industries and 9 service industries).

A number of potential problems with our outsourcing measures should be noted.

4.2. Outsourcing trends in developed countries

Material outsourcing intensities are significantly higher than service outsourcing in

Figure 2. United Kingdom: Outsourcing intensity of intermediate inputs

Source: Input-Output Tables-United Kingdom National Accounts and IMF, Balance of

In sum, service outsourcing is much lower than material outsourcing, but it is

4.3. Which countries are the biggest outsourcers?

Table 2. Who are the biggest absolute outsourcers, 2002?a

Rank Country Business services Rank Country Computer and

In the categories of computer and information services (which is quantitatively

11 An electronic Appendix with rankings of all countries is available on the Economic

Table 3. Who are the biggest relative outsourcers (2002)?a

Rank Country Business services Rank Country Computer and

A. Ratio to Local GDP (%)

B. Ratio to Value-added of Local Service Sector (%)

Note: a There is no separate information on computer and information services in the

4.4. Who are the biggest ‘insourcers’?

Table 4. Who are the biggest absolute insourcers (2002)?a

Rank Country Business services Rank Country Computer and

Note: a There is no separate information on computer and information services in the

Source: IMF, Balance of Payments Statistics Yearbook.

Table 5. Who are the biggest relative insourcers, 2002?a

Rank Economy Business services Rank Economy Computer and

Note: a There is no separate information on computer and information services in the

4.5. Who are the biggest surplus countries?

Figure 3. Insourcing and outsourcing of business services (billion dollars)

Source: IMF, Balance of Payments Statistics Yearbook and International Financial

Surplus countries Surplus countries Surplus countries

1 United 20,555.96 1 Ireland 9,882.71 1 United 23,628.68

Kong SAR Kingdom Kong SAR

135 Russia -2,570.90 95 Russia -454.30 137 Russia -3,025.20

Source: IMF, Balance of Payments Statistics Yearbook.

Figure 4. Insourcing and outsourcing of computer and information services

Source: IMF, Balance of Payments Statistics Yearbook and International Financial

5. DOES SERVICE OUTSOURCING REDUCE JOBS?

ln Lit = a0 + a1 ln wit + ß ln .it + . ln yit (2)

In general, an increase in output would be expected to have a positive effect on

* p < 0.1; p < 0.05; * p < 0.01

* p < 0.1; p < 0.05; * p < 0.01

* p < 0.1; p < 0.05; * p < 0.01