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Declines in the energy intensity of national gross domestic product cannot be simply taken as evidence of a country's contribution to global decarbonization, notably when they come from structural changes that relocate energy-intensive production abroad. Here we analyze the role of offshoring in shaping energy intensity trends in a panel of 15 countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development between 1970 and 2021. Using both a decomposition analysis and a structural econometric model, we show that shifts in the composition of national output not mirrored by equivalent changes in domestic consumption patterns significantly and persistently reduce national energy intensity. These findings support the need to move beyond production-based climate metrics and to incorporate global supply chains for a more reliable assessment of national decarbonization pathways.
We investigate the effects of offshoring on job security using matched employer-employee data from Sweden. Between 1997 and 2011, the share of offshoring firms fell from around 25 to 22% while offshoring per worker within offshoring firms almost doubled. We use this variation to contribute to the literature by examining the effects of the neighboring firms' offshoring (external offshoring) on job separation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Our results suggest that external offshoring has a significant impact on job security in SMEs that do not offshore themselves. In addition, having a university degree, being young, and being new to the job reduce the risk of a job exit due to increased external offshoring. This result is indicative of a Schumpeterian job-restructuring effect where old jobs are replaced by newer ones. Finally, the increased risk of a job exit in SMEs suggests a higher vulnerability of these firms to local shocks due to offshoring activities in larger neighboring firms.
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We investigate the offshoring effect on local productivity, physical and intellectual capital investment at the U.S. county level from 1999 to 2006. By using regression with fixed effects and instrumental variable to account for possible endogeneity, we find that offshoring can increase overall local productivity and capital investment. Through industry linkages, an increase in productivity and capital investment from offshoring enhances those increases in non-offshoring industries. Industries in both MSA (urban) and non-MSA (rural) counties receive benefits of productivity expansion and capital investment from offshoring. The increased capital investment from offshoring could be a channel of local productivity and capital investment expansion.
Much has been written about the offshoring phenomenon from an economic efficiency perspective. Most authors have attempted to measure the net economic effects of the strategy and many purport to show that "in the long run" that benefits will outweigh the costs. There is also a relatively large literature on implementation which describes the best way to manage the offshoring process. But what is the morality of offshoring? What is its "rightness" or "wrongness?" Little analysis of the ethics of offshoring has been completed thus far. This paper develops a preliminary framework for analyzing the ethics of offshoring and then applies this framework to basic case study of offshoring in the U.S. The paper following discusses the definition of offshoring; shifts to the basic philosophical grounding of the ethical concepts; develops a template for conducting an ethics analysis of offshoring; applies this template using basic data for offshoring in the United States; and conducts a preliminary ethical analysis of the phenomenon in that country, using a form of utilitarianism as an analytical baseline. The paper concludes with suggestions for further research.
After decades of outsourcing to low-cost countries, companies are restructuring their production footprint globally. Especially having experienced supply chain disruption caused by the unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic for the past several years, many multinational companies are considering bringing their operations back home (i.e., reshoring). At the same time, the U.S. government proposes using tax penalties to motivate companies to reshore. In this paper, we study how a global supply chain adjusts its offshoring and reshoring production decisions under two different circumstances: (1) under traditional corporate tax regulations; (2) under the proposed tax penalty regulations. We analyze cost variants, tax structures, market access and production risks to identify conditions where global companies decide to bring manufacturing back to their domestic countries. Our results show that multinational companies would be more likely to relocate the production from the main foreign country to an alternative country that enjoys even lower production costs under the proposed tax penalty. As identified by our analysis and as well as numerical simulations, reshoring can only occur in rare situations such as when the production costs in the foreign countries are close to that in the domestic country. Besides potential national tax reform, we also discuss the impact of the Global Minimum Tax Rate proposed by the G7 on global companies' offshoring/reshoring decisions.
- The issue of offshore outsourcing of healthcare services is a critical but little-examined problem in healthcare research. The purpose of this study is to contribute to filling this void. A library-based study was carried out of the development of the Indian medical transcription offshoring industry. Findings- Cost-saving potential and the degree of outsourceability are higher for medical transcription compared with most services. Offshoring experience, typically in a low-value BPO, helps to enhance productivity and international linkages required for the success of medical transcription. Research limitations/implications - An important area of future research concerns comparing India's factor endowments in medical transcription outsourcing with other services. Further research is also needed to examine how India differs from its regional competitors in terms of factors endowments associated with these services. Another extension would be to investigate the drivers of offshoring of higher value services such as radiological readings. Practical implications - ICT infrastructures needed for outsourcing require much less investment compared with leading capital-intensive industries. The development patterns of the Indian medical and offshoring industries indicate that India may attract higher skilled medical functions in the future. The Indian offshoring industry is shifting its focus from BPO to knowledge process outsourcing (KPO). Developing countries need to shift to greater automation and greater levels of skill training to retain and reinforce their comparative advantages. This paper's greatest value stems from the fact that it examines the drivers of a new but rapidly growing healthcare industry.
The present study analyzes the offshoring network constructed from the information contained in the Panama Papers, characterizing worldwide regions and countries as well as their intra- and inter-relationships. The Panama Papers 2016 divulgence is the largest leak of offshoring and tax avoidance documentation. The document leak, with a volume content of approximately 2.6 terabytes, involves more than two hundred thousand enterprises in more than two hundred countries. From this information, the offshore connections of individuals and companies are constructed and aggregated using their countries of origin. The top offshore financial regions and countries of the network are identified, and their intra- and inter-relationship are mapped and described. We are able to identify the top countries in the offshoring network and characterize their connectivity structure, discovering the more prominent actors in the worldwide offshoring scenario and their range of influence.
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In contemplating the prospects of advanced world countries, researchers stand divided among two groups: one group crying "melting of glaciers" and the group denying global warming as a significant concern while reaping the fruits of growth. One persistent concern for the other group is much desirable economic growth at the cost of environmental degradation, which is now reaching a scale where the global climate is become not only unsustainable but also causing a significant threat to our existence. In our opinion, environmental degradation should be taken very seriously now, particularly by pointing out the necessary variables causing it so that effective policy designs are formulated. The present study also gives a brief overview of the environmental repercussions with references to technology-led growth in developed countries. We have incorporated the direct composition effect captured by the capital-labor ratio (K/L), indicating that advanced countries use environmentally friendly technology for production processes. We propose that the most vulnerable impact of economic activities on environmental degradation (measured through carbon dioxide emissions) are urbanization, trade, and energy use. The latter is probably more policy-oriented, is undoubtedly more easily measured, and could be deeply analyzed for policy formulation. Whereas, in the urban areas, emissions of carbon dioxide particulate with an increase in population and development and serve as a significant concern for global environmental sustainability.
Global online platforms match firms with service providers around the world, in services ranging from software development to copywriting and graphic design. Unlike in traditional offshore outsourcing, service providers are predominantly one-person microproviders located in emerging-economy countries not necessarily associated with offshoring and often disadvantaged by negative country images. How do these microproviders survive and thrive? We theorize global platforms through transaction cost economics (TCE), arguing that they are a new technology-enabled offshoring institution that emerges in response to cross-border information asymmetries that hitherto prevented microproviders from participating in offshoring markets. To explain how platforms achieve this, we adapt signaling theory to a TCE-based model and test our hypotheses by analyzing 6 months of transaction records from a leading platform. To help interpret the results and generalize them beyond a single platform, we introduce supplementary data from 107 face-to-face interviews with microproviders in Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Individuals choose microprovidership when it provides a better return on their skills and labor than employment at a local (offshoring) firm. The platform acts as a signaling environment that allows microproviders to inform foreign clients of their quality, with platform-generated signals being the most informative signaling type. Platform signaling disproportionately benefits emerging-economy providers, allowing them to partly overcome the effects of negative country images and thus diminishing the importance of home country institutions. Global platforms in other factor and product markets likely promote cross-border microbusiness through similar mechanisms.
The prospect of offshoring and outsourcing business processes has captured the imagination of CEOs everywhere. In the past five years, a rising number of companies in North America and Europe have experimented with this strategy, hoping to reduce costs and gain strategic advantage. But many businesses have had mixed results. According to several studies, half the organizations that have shifted processes offshore have failed to generate the expected financial benefits. What's more, many of them have faced employee resistance and consumer dissatisfaction. Clearly, companies have to rethink how they formulate their offshoring strategies. A three-part methodology can help. First, companies need to prioritize their processes, ranking each based on two criteria: the value it creates for customers and the degree to which the company can capture some of that value. Companies will want to keep their core (highest-priority) processes in-house and consider outsourcing their commodity (low-priority) processes; critical (moderate-priority) processes are up for debate and must be considered carefully. Second, businesses should analyze all the risks that accompany offshoring and look systematically at their critical and commodity processes in terms of operational risk (the risk that processes won't operate smoothly after being offshored) and structural risk (the risk that relationships with service providers may not work as expected). Finally, companies should determine possible locations for their offshore efforts, as well as the organizational forms--such as captive centers and joint ventures--that those efforts might take. They can do so by examining each process's operational and structural risks side by side. This article outlines the tools that will help companies choose the right processes to offshore. It also describes a new organizational structure called the extended organization, in which companies specify the quality of services they want and work alongside providers to get that quality.
This paper explores the connection of offshoring and outsourcing to nonconsensual global pharmaceutical trials in low-income countries. After discussing reasons why the topic of nonconsensual offshored clinical trials may be overlooked in bioethics literature, I suggest that when pharmaceutical corporations offshore clinical trials today, nonconsensual experiments are often foreseeable and not simply the result of aberrant ethical conduct by a few individuals. Offshoring of clinical trials is structured so that experiments can be presented as health care in a unique form of outsourcing from the host country to pharmaceutical corporations. Bioethicists' assessments of the risks and potential benefits of offshore corporate pharmaceutical trials should therefore systematically include not only the hoped for benefits and the risks of the experimental drug but also the risk that subjects will not have consented, as well as the broader international consequences of nonconsensual experimentation.
In the past few years, companies have become aware that they can slash costs by offshoring: moving jobs to lower-wage locations. But this practice is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how globalization can transform industries, according to research by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI). The institute's yearlong study suggests that by streamlining their production processes and supply chains globally, rather than just nationally or regionally, companies can lower their costs-as we've seen in the consumer-electronics and PC industries. Companies can save as much as 70% of their total costs through globalization--50% from offshoring, 5% from training and business-task redesign, and 15% from process improvements. But they don't have to stop there. The cost reductions make it possible to lower prices and expand into new markets, attracting whole new classes of customers. To date, however, few businesses have recognized the full scope of performance improvements that globalization makes possible, much less developed sound strategies for capturing those opportunities. In this article, Diana Farrell, director of MGI, offers a step-by-step approach to doing both things. Among her suggestions: Assess where your industry falls along the globalization spectrum, because not all sectors of the economy face the same challenges and opportunities at the same time. Also, pay attention to production, regulatory, and organizational barriers to globalization. If any of these can be changed, size up the cost-saving (and revenue-generating) opportunities that will emerge for your company as a result of those changes. Farrell also defines the five stages of globalization-market entry, product specialization, value chain disaggregation, value chain reengineering, and the creation of new markets-and notes the different levers for cutting costs and creating value that companies can use in each phase.
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The issue of globalization of research is receiving considerable attention due to the increasing number of offshored R&D activities from the United States, Europe, and Japan. This paper explores this phenomenon and provides a model to analyze the factors that will likely contribute to a global transformation of clinical trials. By identifying the main characteristics of clinical trials, I aim to clarify the main driver of the relocation process of clinical research. I reviewed the relevant published articles to address the research questions. The results of this study challenge the traditional thinking of cost-related factors as the major reason for offshoring cilinical trials and show the importance of the recruitment of human subjects in trials. Consequently, this paper suggests that "recruitment crisis" in home country as the main contribution and a key driver to offshore R&D activities, has been underestimated by previous studies. In particular, this study provides policy-decision makers with a new insight into the development issue surrounding the pharmaceutical industry.
Chemical pesticides are often implicated in the ongoing declines of European farmland biodiversity. Pesticides support intensive agriculture in the EU, but environmental and human health risks must be managed and weighed against the need for crop production. Here I attempt a balanced review of the current EU pesticide regulatory process with a focus on environmental risk assessment. I find there are key weaknesses, for example with regards accounting for exposure to multiple active substances, and that wildlife are routinely exposed to residues of multiple active substances at the landscape scale, with apparent trophic level effects. Linking observed exposure to effects is problematic, however, and pesticides are not the only driver of biodiversity loss. I discuss the need to maintain crop production in the EU to avoid off-shoring environmental disbenefits, in the context of the EU Green deal, and in light of ongoing biodiversity declines. I consider the potential for increased landscape heterogeneity to complement the aims of pesticide regulation by promoting farmland biodiversity and crop beneficial ecosystem services, and potentially to mitigate, in some scenarios, negative effects of pesticides. I explore the available policy instruments to promote landscape heterogeneity, barriers to uptake and scenario-specific concrete measures. I conclude that residue-aware environmental risk assessment and reduced pesticide use through measures such as plant breeding, integrated pest management and precision application of pesticides, coupled with enhanced landscape heterogeneity to promote biodiversity and mitigate some pesticide effects, offer potential to achieve the desired outcome of reversing biodiversity decline while ensuring ongoing EU crop production.
Value and job creation are frequently claimed as positive by-products of decarbonization. The lack of a standardized methodology and quantitative analyses limit the credibility of such claims. In this work we apply the Jobs and Economic Development Impacts (JEDI) framework to our model of UK power and industry and consistently quantify the impact on economic value and employment for a range of net zero scenarios. Our results suggest that a net zero target can create gross value added and jobs under the right conditions. Offshoring industrial emissions, however, results in a reduction of both, whereas expanding domestic low-carbon industry can lead to further value and job creation. We determine economic sectors with gains and losses, and quantify the impact of local supply chains vs. importing goods and services. A thought experiment indicates ways to further increase value added.
New studies linking biodiversity loss with global trade dynamics reveal off-shoring of biodiversity losses and suggest that a far greater wave of global extinctions is on the horizon, driven by land conversion and exploitation for export.
The rapid acquisition of larg volumes of thin-section CT images has created a considerable need and interest for 3D postprocessing during the interpretation of medical imaging. As a result of the increasing number of postprocessing applications, requiring diagnostic radiologists to perform postprocessing is no longer realistic. This article is a comprehensive review of medical resources regarding establishing a postprocessing radiology laboratory. Besides, leadership and managerial aspects have been covered through a professional business lens. In large-volume settings, a dedicated 3D postprocessing lab ensures the quality, reproducibility, and efficiency of images. Adequate staffing is necessary to fulfill the postprocessing requirements. Educational and experience requirements for 3D technologists may vary among different running laboratories. To evaluate the establishment and running of a 3D lab, it is beneficial to implement diagnostic radiology cost-effectiveness tools. Although establishing a 3D lab has many benefits, certain challenges should be considered. Outsourcing or offshoring may serve as alternatives for establishing a postprocessing laboratory. Building and operating a 3D lab is a significant change in healthcare facilities, and it is crucial for organizations to be aware of the strong resistance toward alternatives the status quo, known as the status quo trap. The change process has essential steps, and skipping the steps creates an illusion of speed but never produces satisfactory results. The organization should ensure the engagement of all interested parties in the whole process. Moreover, a clear vision and proper communication of the vision are vital, and it is crucial to value small wins and ensure expectation clarity in leading the lab during the process.