Does outsourcing and offshoring of intermediate production inflate the productivity measures?
In the business sector, outsourcing to domestic nonmanufacturing industries and offshoring to foreign businesses alter the distribution of production among firms. Since firms can differ in their productivity, domestic outsourcing can affect business sector productivity if the contracting firm differs in its productivity from the outsourced production. Similarly, offshoring can affect business sector productivity if the productivity of the production lost to offshoring differs from the productivity of remaining and any new U.S. business sector production. Any effect of offshoring on business sector productivity change is expected to be modest. Outsourcing and offshoring have the potential for greater effect on labor productivity at the industry level. In manufacturing, outsourcing and offshoring have contributed about 1.5% per year to sectoral output per hour growth between 1973 and 1995. Their contribution has slowed to only about 1% per year thereafter and as a result they do not appe
