This paper studies the role of efficiency in a firm's decision to contract out. Emphasis is on the heterogeneous nature of firms and when firms are only considering outsourcing to domestic suppliers. Firm-level data on Australian manufacturing reveal an ordering of efficiency between firms that...

This paper sheds new light on the forces shaping outsourcing decision by considering a certain form of non-linearity in overhead costs which effectively discretizes a firm's size into small and large regimes. Extending Grossman & Helpman (2002) in this line shows that firms unable to fully...