Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP4719
Authors: Mary Amiti; Shangjin Wei
Abstract: 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? 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.
Keywords: offshoring; outsourcing; services; trade
JEL Codes: F10; F20
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| service outsourcing (L24) | employment growth (O49) |
| service outsourcing (L24) | job creation (J68) |
| material outsourcing (M55) | employment losses (J63) |
| outsourcing (L24) | job growth (O49) |
| broader classification of sectors (L80) | job growth correlation (O49) |