Multinational investment and host country development: Location efficiencies for services offshoring

Services offshoring has become an important source of investment and development in many emerging economies. While much attention has been paid to companies' use of services offshoring to lower costs, not all of these offshoring activities have yielded the anticipated results. Thus, the choice of where to locate offshore facilities is an important yet complex one that has substantial implications for both the investing firm and host country. In this paper, we adopt the perspectives of service firms located in the U.S. and empirically examine the attractiveness of host countries for offshoring of services. Using data envelopment analysis (DEA), we examine which countries use their resources or inputs most efficiently in order to produce outputs that make them attractive for services offshoring. We find that China, India, Ireland, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Slovakia, Spain, and the U.K. are particularly attractive locations for services offshoring. All of these countries have at least one core efficiency-creating competency among the key inputs of wages, education, and infrastructure. We discuss implications for firms and government policy makers and offer recommendations for future research.