'Slicing the Value Chain' Internationally : Empirical Evidence on the Offshoring Strategy by French Firms

This paper analyzes the off-shoring strategy from an empirical view. It focuses on a set of models, extracts a set of testable hypothesizes and creates a suitable set of variable to test their validity. This analysis is based on a data set from French manufacturing firms that provides detailed information on the off-shoring strategy. The choice of off-shoring modes is investigated through the estimation of a multinomial logit model and associated to a set of explanatory variables at the firm, industry and country levels. Our results emphasize the role of firm heterogeneity, input specificity and of market thickness