Offshoring and export performance in the european automotive industry

This paper investigates the impact of offshoring on export performances of French, German and Italian automotive firms. We argue that the different offshoring strategies run by the main European automakers are responsible for the discrepancies in export performances of France, Germany and Italy on the world automotive market. We use an export equation and a panel data analysis and show that offshoring strongly affect exports of automotive firms. Focussing on the French and German export performances, we show that the relatively low export performance of France in the automotive industry since the end of the 1990s is mainly the result of an increase in offshoring lead by Renault and PSA.