Off-Shoring and Productivity Growth in the Italian Manufacturing Industries

We study the relation between the off-shoring of intermediates and services
and productivity growth in the Italian manufacturing industries in 1995-2003.
Our results indicate that the off-shoring of intermediates within the same
industry (narrow off-shoring) is beneficial for productivity growth, while
the off-shoring of services is not. We also find that the way in which off-
shoring is measured may matter considerably. The positive relation between off-
shoring of intermediates and productivity growth is there with our direct
measures based on input-output data but disappears when either a broad measure
or the Feenstra-Hanson off-shoring measure employed in other studies are used
instead.