Outsourcing, foreign ownership, exporting and productivity: An empirical investigation with plant level data

We investigate the impact of international outsourcing on productivity using plant level data for Irish manufacturing. Specifically, we distinguish the effect of outsourcing of materials from services inputs. Moreover, we examine whether the impact on productivity is different for plants being more embedded in international markets through exporting or being part of a multinational. Our results demonstrate that these distinctions can in general be important and are line with implications from the recent theoretical literature.