The rising incidence of alternative work arrangements, such as outsourcing, raises important questions about worker outcomes in such non-standard labor contracts. We study this question in the Netherlands, a country with a rapid rise in flexible labor contracts, using administrative...

Background: The growth of parcel volumes in urban areas, largely driven by e-commerce, has increased the complexity of pickup and delivery operations. To meet demands for cost efficiency, flexibility, and sustainability, CEP (Courier, Express, and Parcel) operators increasingly outsource...

We study the degree and nature of political budget cycles in public investments when two instruments are available: investments by core governments and, more indirectly, by state-owned enterprises (SOEs). While fiscal pressure on core budgets may induce politicians to shift election-induced...

Employers are adopting and refining artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithm-based tools in the workplace, with wide-ranging implications for work and employment. This working paper examines case studies of social dialogue on AI at national, regional, sectoral, company, and workplace levels in...

This paper examines the relationship between geopolitical fragmentation and friendshoring of foreign investments over time, countries, and sectors. The analysis uses comprehensive data on foreign direct investments covering greenfield projects, mergers and acquisitions, and stocks of affiliates,...

Background: Ensuring cost-efficient and high-quality processes for logistics tasks is a significant competitive factor for companies. This includes not only improving existing processes but also examining outsourcing opportunities. Current trends, such as the increasing variety of products,...

The European Central Bank (ECB) acknowledges that the use of cloud services offers various benefits to supervised entities. Compared to internal information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure, cloud services are cost efficient, scalable, secure due to providers using cutting-edge...

This study investigates the impact of labor outsourcing on innovation, using manually collected data from Chinese A-share listed companies from 2012 to 2022. The results indicate that labor outsourcing significantly enhances firms' innovation level. This relationship is primarily driven by...

This study examines the impact of domestic outsourcing on the wages of workers performing outsourced tasks in Türkiye, using an administrative employee-employer linked dataset. Outsourcing events are identified by tracking worker flows across firms with specific properties. Unlike existing...

The aim of the article is to evaluate the position in global value chains (GVCs) of food processing industries in the Visegrad countries (V4; Poland, Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia) between 1995 and 2018. To identify the intensity and forms of integration in GVC of these industries in each country...

Capabilities enable performance, but how does their absence constrain performance? We ask this critical question as firms continuously adapt to the fast-evolving environment, refreshing their capabilities. Studying outsourcing service provider capabilities in digital transformational outsourcing...

Generative AI (GenAI) and Large Language Models (LLMs) are moving into domains once seen as uniquely human: reasoning, synthesis, abstraction, and rhetoric. Addressed to labor economists and informed readers, this paper clarifies what is truly new about LLMs, what is not, and why it matters....

Generative AI (GenAI) and Large Language Models (LLMs) are moving into domains once seen as uniquely human—reasoning, synthesis, abstraction, and rhetoric. Addressed to labor economists and informed readers, this paper clarifies what is truly new about LLMs, what is not, and why it matters....

This paper studies the use of domestic outsourcing to circumvent labor benefits and its consequences for firms and workers. Drawing on longitudinal establishment data and employer-employee data from Mexico, we provide evidence that many firms were outsourcing their entire workforce to avoid...

Firms increasingly contract out a wide range of activities that were previously done in-house, such as cleaning, security, logistics, and catering. This paper provides evidence on the impact of outsourcing on workers' earnings and possible reasons that firms outsource by estimating panel data...

We estimate the labor market impacts of Brazil's 1993 outsourcing legalization using North-South variation in pre-legalization court permissiveness, and comparing security guards to less-affected occupations. We find that outsourcing legalization persistently reallocated jobs from older...

Mexico's ban on subcontracting or outsourcing practices, implemented in 2021, represents a pivotal development in the nation's labor market policies. This paper presents an analysis of the effects of the prohibition of domestic outsourcing, drawing on individual worker-level data. Employing a...