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Outsourcing of Services and the Productivity Recovery in U.S. Manufacturing in the 1980s and 1990s

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  • Thijs Raa
  • Edward Wolff

Abstract

Manufacturing productivity growth recovered during the 1980s and 1990s, while other sectors, particularly services, did not. In the same period U.S. manufacturing has engaged in the “outsourcing” or “contracting-out” of service functions. Has the recovery of manufacturing been accomplished by industrial reorganization--sloughing off sluggish services--rather than technical progress? We analyze this question by reducing service inputs to their consituent elements of material inputs. Service productivity growth is thus imputed to the goods sectors, reducing the recovery of manufacturing productivity growth in the 1980s by one fifth. The recovery lasted through the 1990s, when high productivity performers in manufacturing have been relatively successful at outsourcing sluggishservices. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2001

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  • Thijs Raa & Edward Wolff, 2001. "Outsourcing of Services and the Productivity Recovery in U.S. Manufacturing in the 1980s and 1990s," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 16(2), pages 149-165, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jproda:v:16:y:2001:i:2:p:149-165
    DOI: 10.1023/A:1011683310955
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    productivity; services; outsourcing;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O47 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence

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