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Unpublished Paper
Innovations, off-shoring and specialization
University of Perugia, mimeo (2010)
  • Ioannis Bournakis
  • Michela Vecchi
  • Francesco Venturini
Abstract

This paper investigates the role of innovations in affecting specialisation by allowing countries to rely not only on their traditional factor endowments but also on their abilities to increase their stock of knowledge (R&D) and technologically advanced (ICT) capital, and on their abilities to access resources in other countries (off-shoring). By looking at measures of specialisation based on industry shares of GDP or total employment, we present evidence for 18 manufacturing and service industries, using data for the US, Japan and the largest EU countries for the period 1990-2005. Our results suggest that accumulating ICT or R&D at the industry level enhances both relative employment and value added and that, in some cases, national endowments of such inputs may reinforce this effect. On the other side, intraindustry purchases of off-shored inputs (so called narrow off-shoring) are more beneficial for value added than for occupation shares; this contrasts with evidence obtained for the broad off-shoring of material and service inputs, whose occupational effects translate one-to-one into changes in industry shares of GDP.

Keywords
  • ICT capital,
  • R&D capital,
  • off-shoring,
  • specialization
Disciplines
Publication Date
2010
Citation Information
Ioannis Bournakis, Michela Vecchi and Francesco Venturini. "Innovations, off-shoring and specialization" University of Perugia, mimeo (2010)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/francesco_venturini/21/