It has been theorized that businesses are more likely to outsource when demand uncertainty is large in order to gain flexibility in production. We provide the first firm-level test of this hypothesis, making use of unique longitudinal data on Australian manufacturing. We find that new...

Ample evidence from micro data suggests that productivity at establishment level is dominated by idiosyncratic factors. The productivity differences across establishments are very large and persistent even with the narrowest definition of industries. There is an attempt to identify sources of...

A general framework for the study of outsourcing is introduced that incorporates dynamics and heterogeneity among both upstream and downstream producers to mimic an exit approach (Hirschman, 1970) to building vertical relations. The environment is one of search friction and incomplete contracts,...

There is a growing concern that size-contingent regulatory taxes are causing considerable mis-allocation of resources from large efficient firms to small inefficient firms, with significant implications for welfare and aggregate productivity. Using a monopolistic competition framework, I...

This paper sheds new light on the forces shaping outsourcing decision by considering a certain form of non-linearity in overhead costs which effectively discretizes a firm's size into small and large regimes. Extending Grossman & Helpman (2002) in this line shows that firms unable to fully...