Foreign outsourcing and firm-level characteristics: Evidence from Japanese manufacturers

By Eiichi Tomiura. 2005

149 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Based on micro data of 118,300 firms without firm-size thresholds covering all manufacturing industries in Japan, this paper investigates the foreign outsourcing, distinguished explicitly from domestic outsourcing, at the firm level. Less than three percent of the firms are outsourcing their production across national borders. The fixed entry cost for foreign outsourcing is significant and related with the firm's human skills and foreign business experience. The firms tend to outsource more of their activities overseas when their productivity is higher or when their products are more labor-intensive.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Management Information Systems, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9d0090171b2fbf108abedf58dfdea6032c9ce8ea

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

1. Karsten Olsen
2. J. Martínez
3. Eiichi Tomiura
4. Joachim Wagner

In Management Information Systems

1. Karsten Olsen
2. J. Martínez
3. Eiichi Tomiura

In Strategy and Management

1. Karsten Olsen
2. J. Martínez
3. Eiichi Tomiura

Citations in the corpus

• Productivity effects of international outsourcing: evidence from plant-level data (2008, unknown): “Tomiura (2005) and Kurz (2006) using data for Japan and the US, respectively, model a firm’s decision to outsource and find that more productive firms are more likely to outsource.”
• Job Losses, Outsourcing and Relocation: Empirical Evidence Using Microdata (2006, unknown): “Tomiura (2005) uses a more detailed database and finds that more productive firms tend to be more active in outsourcing, and similarly that firms with more labour-intensive production tend to outsource more.”
• Outsourcing decision, product innovation and the spatial dimension: evidence from the Spanish footwear industry (2009, background): “The positive relationship between firm size and outsourcing behavior has been also empirically contrasted (Kimura, 2001; Holl, 2004 and 2007; Tomiura, 2005 and 2006; Ono, 2007).”
• Foreign outsourcing, exporting, and FDI: A productivity comparison at the firm level (2007, background): “Tomiura (2004) discusses advantages and limitations of various FO measures.”
• Outsourcing versus integration at home or abroad and firm heterogeneity (2010, unknown): “In fact, with the exception of Tomiura (2005, 2007), empirical literature has been forced by data limitations to use a wider definition of outsourcing, ranging from imports of all - intermediate and final - goods (Antràs 2003, Yeaple 2006, Nunn and Trefler 2008) to raw materials and components…”
• DOES OFFSHORING PAY? FIRM‐LEVEL EVIDENCE FROM JAPAN (2010, unknown): “Tomiura (2005) analyzes the determinants of offshoring decisions.”
• Productivity Impacts of Offshoring and Outsourcing: A Review (2006, background): “This finding is in contrast with Tomiura (2004) who investigates determinants of outsourcing using a slightly more recent and much larger sample.”