IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cen/wpaper/01-15.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Outsourcing Business Service and the Scope of Local Markets

Author

Listed:
  • Yukako Ono

Abstract

This paper examines outsourcing to test whether productivity-enhancing specialization is facilitated in bigger cities. First, the paper provides a theoretical model which shows that greater local demand for a given input promotes the entry of suppliers into a city; the increased number of suppliers then results in lower outsourcing prices and a higher use of outsourcing by final producers, therefore reducing the final producers' production costs. I then test the predictions of the model by examining manufacturing plants' practices of outsourcing business services, by using plant-level data from the 1992 Annual Survey of Manufactures. The empirical results show that an exogenous increase in local demand promotes the entry of service suppliers and increases a firm's probability of outsourcing for white-collar services. In particular, I found that doubling the intensity of the use of a service in a U.S. county, which can be attributed to the industrial composition of the county, results in a 7% to 25% increase in the probability of outsourcing.

Suggested Citation

  • Yukako Ono, 2001. "Outsourcing Business Service and the Scope of Local Markets," Working Papers 01-15, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    • Handle: RePEc:cen:wpaper:01-15
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2001/CES-WP-01-15.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Goodfriend, Marvin & McDermott, John, 1995. "Early Development," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(1), pages 116-133, March.
    2. Glaeser, Edward L & Hedi D. Kallal & Jose A. Scheinkman & Andrei Shleifer, 1992. "Growth in Cities," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(6), pages 1126-1152, December.
      • Edward L. Glaeser & Hedi D. Kallal & Jose A. Scheinkman & Andrei Shleifer, 1991. "Growth in Cities," NBER Working Papers 3787, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
      • Glaeser, Edward Ludwig & Kallal, Hedi D. & Scheinkman, Jose A. & Shleifer, Andrei, 1992. "Growth in Cities," Scholarly Articles 3451309, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    3. Ciccone, Antonio & Hall, Robert E, 1996. "Productivity and the Density of Economic Activity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(1), pages 54-70, March.
    4. Henderson, J. Vernon, 1986. "Efficiency of resource usage and city size," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 47-70, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Tomás F. Espino-rodríguez & Víctor Padrón Robaina, 2005. "The management perception of the strategic outsourcing of services: An empirical examination in the hotel sector," The Service Industries Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(5), pages 689-708, July.
    2. Roberto Antonietti & Maria Rosaria Ferrante & Riccardo Leoncini, 2014. "Spatial Agglomeration, Production Technology and the Choice to Make and/or Buy: Empirical Evidence from the Emilia Romagna Machine Tool Industry," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(2), pages 284-300, February.
    3. Ann Bartel & Saul Lach & Nachum Sicherman, 2005. "Outsourcing and Technological Change," NBER Working Papers 11158, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Yukako Ono & Victor Stango, 2005. "Outsourcing, firm size, and product complexity: evidence from credit unions," Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, vol. 29(Q I), pages 2-11.
    5. Davis, James C. & Henderson, J. Vernon, 2008. "The agglomeration of headquarters," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(5), pages 445-460, September.
    6. Michael A. Kouparitsas, 2005. "Is there evidence of the new economy in U.S. GDP data?," Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, vol. 29(Q I), pages 12-29.
    7. Ono, Yukako, 2003. "Outsourcing business services and the role of central administrative offices," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(3), pages 377-395, May.
    8. Andrew Friedson & Jing Li, 2015. "The impact of agglomeration economies on hospital input prices," Health Economics Review, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 1-15, December.
    9. Roberto Antonietti & Giulio Cainelli, 2011. "Geographic concentration and vertical disintegration in KIBS: evidence from the metropolitan area of Milan," Openloc Working Papers 1105, Public policies and local development.
    10. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2012_017 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Francis, Bill & Hasan, Iftekhar & John, Kose & Waisman, Maya, 2012. "Urban agglomeration and CEO compensation," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 17/2012, Bank of Finland.
    12. Francis, Bill B. & Hasan, Iftekhar & John, Kose & Waisman, Maya, 2016. "Urban Agglomeration and CEO Compensation," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 51(6), pages 1925-1953, December.
    13. Roberto Antonietti & Giulio Cainelli, 2012. "Urban size and KIBS vertical disintegration: Evidence from Lombardy," ERSA conference papers ersa12p666, European Regional Science Association.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ono, Yukako, 2007. "Market thickness and outsourcing services," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 220-238, March.
    2. Agarwalla, Astha, 2011. "Agglomeration Economies and Productivity Growth in India," IIMA Working Papers WP2011-01-08, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Research and Publication Department.
    3. Wei Tang & Geoffrey J.D. Hewings, 2017. "Do city–county mergers in China promote local economic development?," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 25(3), pages 439-469, July.
    4. David C. Maré & Jason Timmins, 2006. "Geographic concentration and firm productivity," Working Papers 06_08, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    5. Marcus Berliant & Chia-Ming Yu, 2015. "Locational Signaling And Agglomeration," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(5), pages 757-773, November.
    6. Stuart S. Rosenthal & William C. Strange, 2003. "Geography, Industrial Organization, and Agglomeration," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(2), pages 377-393, May.
    7. Yukako Ono, 2000. "Outsourcing Business Service and the Scope of Local Markets," Working Papers 00-14, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    8. Koh, Hyun-Ju & Riedel, Nadine & Böhm, Tobias, 2013. "Do governments tax agglomeration rents?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 92-106.
    9. J. Vernon Henderson, 2001. "Marshall's Scale Economies," Working Papers 2001-46, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    10. Wheeler, Christopher H., 2006. "Productivity and the geographic concentration of industry: The role of plant scale," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 313-330, May.
    11. Ana Maria Bonomi Barufi & Eduardo Amaral Haddad & Peter Nijkamp, 2016. "Industrial scope of agglomeration economies in Brazil," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 56(3), pages 707-755, May.
    12. Combes, Pierre-Philippe & Duranton, Gilles & Gobillon, Laurent, 2008. "Spatial wage disparities: Sorting matters!," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 723-742, March.
    13. Mano, Yukichi & Otsuka, Keijiro, 2000. "Agglomeration Economies and Geographical Concentration of Industries: A Case Study of Manufacturing Sectors in Postwar Japan," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 189-203, September.
    14. repec:rri:wpaper:200605 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Hans Koster & Jos N. van Ommeren & Piet Rietveld, 2010. "Estimating Firms' Demand for Agglomeration," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 10-087/3, Tinbergen Institute.
    16. Dinlersoz, Emin M., 2004. "Cities and the organization of manufacturing," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 71-100, January.
    17. Sung Hyo Hong, 2014. "Agglomeration and relocation: Manufacturing plant relocation in Korea," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 93(4), pages 803-818, November.
    18. Dimitris Skuras & Kostas Tsekouras & Efthalia Dimara, 2011. "Deciphering the effects of agglomeration economies on firms' productive efficiency," ERSA conference papers ersa11p696, European Regional Science Association.
    19. Díaz Serrano, Lluís, 2015. "What explains productivity differentials across spanish cities?," Working Papers 2072/247805, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics.
    20. Alex Anas & Richard Arnott & Kenneth A. Small, 1998. "Urban Spatial Structure," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 36(3), pages 1426-1464, September.
    21. Vernon Henderson, 1999. "Marshall's Economies," NBER Working Papers 7358, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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:cen:wpaper:01-15. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Dawn Anderson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesgvus.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.