IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedker/y2004iqiiip5-37nv.89no.3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Offshoring in the service sector : economic impact and policy issues

Author

Listed:
  • C. Alan Garner

Abstract

The United States continues to run an international trade surplus in services, but business stories frequently appear about service-sector jobs moving offshore. Many Americans are particularly concerned about the loss of skilled, well-paid jobs in such fields as computer programming and accounting. These jobs seemed relatively secure at a time when many manufacturing jobs were being lost to import competition. Similarly, telephone call centers, once viewed as an economic development opportunity in some areas, increasingly are moving to low-wage countries, such as India and the Philippines. Reflecting this growing concern, some members of Congress and state legislators have focused attention on the offshoring of service jobs and production, even introducing legislation to limit the outsourcing of jobs to other countries. Offshoring raises many questions for policymakers and the general public. For example, which service jobs will be affected most by import competition? What are the most likely effects of service-sector offshoring on U.S. output, employment, and, most important, our standard of living? Is offshoring really a problem that requires restrictive government actions, or are other kinds of policies more appropriate to give Americans the highest possible living standard? ; Garner examines the economic effects of offshoring and possible policy responses. He finds that although the offshoring of service jobs hurts some workers, offshoring should not permanently lower U.S. employment or production. ; Moreover, the average living standard can benefit over the long run if the nation adopts policies to retrain displaced workers and move them into expanding industries.

Suggested Citation

  • C. Alan Garner, 2004. "Offshoring in the service sector : economic impact and policy issues," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, vol. 89(Q III), pages 5-37.
  • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedker:y:2004:i:qiii:p:5-37:n:v.89no.3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.kansascityfed.org/documents/1128/2004-Offshoring%20in%20the%20Service%20Sector:%20%20Economic%20Impact%20and%20Policy%20Issues.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rosario Crinò, 2009. "Offshoring, Multinationals And Labour Market: A Review Of The Empirical Literature," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(2), pages 197-249, April.
    2. Rosario Crinò, 2010. "Service Offshoring and White-Collar Employment," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 77(2), pages 595-632.
    3. Brown, Clair & Linden, Greg, 2007. "Semiconductor Engineers in a Global Economy," Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Working Paper Series qt6fr9b2p9, Institute of Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley.
    4. Baldwin, John R. Gu, Wulong, 2008. "Impartition et délocalisation au Canada," Série de documents de recherche sur l'analyse économique (AE) 2008055f, Statistics Canada, Direction des études analytiques.
    5. Daniel CHIQUIAR & Martín TOBAL & Renato YSLAS, 2019. "Measuring and understanding trade in service tasks," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 158(1), pages 169-190, March.
    6. Runjuan Liu & Daniel Trefler, 2008. "Much Ado About Nothing: American Jobs and the Rise of Service Outsourcing to China and India," NBER Working Papers 14061, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, 2007. "Offshoring, Outsourcing, and Production Relocation—Labor-Market Effects in the OECD Countries and Developing Asia," Working Paper Series WP07-2, Peterson Institute for International Economics.
    8. Václav Žďárek, 2009. "Moderní způsoby produkce a přímé zahraniční investice [Modern methods of production and foreign direct investment]," Politická ekonomie, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2009(4), pages 509-543.
    9. Ashley Hodgson & Stacey L. Schreft & Aarti Singh, 2005. "Jobless recoveries and the wait-and-see hypothesis," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, vol. 90(Q IV), pages 81-99.
    10. Martin Tobal, 2019. "A model of wage and employment effects of service offshoring," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(1), pages 303-338, February.
    11. Kedia, Ben L. & Lahiri, Somnath, 2007. "International outsourcing of services: A partnership model," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 22-37, March.
    12. Brown, Clair & Linden, Greg, 2005. "Offshoring in the Semiconductor Industry: Historical Perspectives," Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Working Paper Series qt0wv0k78t, Institute of Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley.
    13. Butler, Bella & Soontiens, Werner, 2015. "Offshoring of higher education services in strategic nets: A dynamic capabilities perspective," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 477-490.
    14. Baldwin, John R. Gu, Wulong, 2008. "Outsourcing and Offshoring in Canada," Economic Analysis (EA) Research Paper Series 2008055e, Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies Branch.
    15. Burnett, Perry & Cutler, Harvey, 2018. "The transitional impacts of material and service offshoring," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 136-150.
    16. Chu-Ping Lo, 2018. "Business Service, International Outsourcing, And Wage Inequality," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 63(05), pages 1175-1182, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Service industries;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedker:y:2004:i:qiii:p:5-37:n:v.89no.3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Zach Kastens (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbkcus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.