The rapid expansion of China's trade today owes much to the procurement of American and European firms for their home demand and the migration of industries from Taiwan and Hong Kong to China as sources for production. The catalytic participation of the former suppliers in Taiwan and Hong Kong...

International organizations often outsource the enforcement of international law to their member states. The International Labor Organization (ILO), for instance, has neither its own adjudicative body nor an internal system of sanctions. Instead, the ILO’s maritime rules authorize states to...

We present a dynamic model where the probability of outsourcing production is increasing inthe firm’s expectation of technological change. As the pace of innovations in productiontechnologies increases, the less time the firm has to amortize the sunk costs associated withpurchasing and...

Ein großer Anteil der multinational tätigen Großunternehmen ist in technologieintensiven, dynamischen Branchen tätig und verfügt über ein breites Spektrum an technologischen Ressourcen. In den vergangenen Dekaden hat ein Großteil dieser Unternehmen zunehmend Wertschöpfungsleistungen an...

We develop a theory of a firm in an incomplete contracts environment which decides on its complexity, organization, and global scale. Specifically, the firm decides i) how thinly it wants to slice its production process by choosing the mass of symmetric intermediate inputs that are...

We investigate the relationship between outsourcing and profitability paying particular attention to the endogeneity of outsourcing. The empirical analysis uses unique plant level data for the electronics sector in Ireland. A particular feature of the data is that it records detailed information...

Recent studies indicate that firms often outsource standard and simple tasks, while keeping complex and important inputs inside their boundaries. This observation is difficult to reconcile with the property rights approach of the firm, which suggests that important components should be...

Recent studies indicate that firms often outsource standard and simple tasks, while keeping complex and important inputs inside their boundaries. This observation is difficult to reconcile with the property rights approach of the firm, which suggests that important components should be...

This paper studies the effects of tariffs on intra-firm trade. Building on the Antràs and Helpman (2004) North-South theoretical framework, I show that higher Northern tariffs reduce the incentives for outsourcing and offshoring, while higher Southern tariffs have the opposite effects. I also...

The possibility to outsource over the internet should revolutionize foreign outsourcing, especially for services (UNCTAD, 2004). Our model describes materials and services input allocation from domestic vs. foreign suppliers. Allocations change when firms outsource online due to access and...