International Outsourcing and Individual Job Separations

This paper studies the effects of international outsourcing on individual transitions out of jobs in the Danish manufacturing sector for the period 1992-2001. Estimation of a single risk duration model, where no distinction is made between different types of transitions out of the job, shows that outsourcing has a clear significant positive effect on the job separation rate, but the effect corresponds to a limited number of lost jobs. A competing risks duration model that distinguishes between job-to-job and job-to-unemployment transitions is also estimated. Outsourcing is found to increase the unemployment risk of workers and in particular low-skilled workers, but again the quantitative impact is not dramatic. Outsourcing also increases the job change hazard rate and mostly so for high-skilled workers.