Summary
This paper analyzes the relationship between IT-outsourcing and labor productivity of 1142 firms from German manufacturing and service industries surveyed in 2000. An endogenous switching regression model takes into account that firms might follow different productivity regimes depending on whether or not they source out IT-tasks. Two semiparametric approaches are presented and applied to the data. They allow the outsourcing decision to nonlinearly depend on firm size. The empirical results show that firms with IT-outsourcing do not differ significantly from non-outsourcing firms with respect to the partial production elasticities of the input factors labor, IT-investment and non-IT-investment. However, firms without IT-outsourcing turn out to produce more than those sourcing out.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Bibliography
Bertschek, I., Fryges, H. & Kaiser, U. (2004). B2B or not to Be: Does B2B E-commerce increase labour productivity?, Discussion paper no. 04-45, ZEW Mannheim.
Bertschek, I. & Kaiser, U. (2004). Productivity effects of organizational change: Microeconometric evidence, Management Science 50(3): 394–404.
Brynjolfsson, E. & Hitt, L. M. (2000). Beyond computation: Information technology, organizational transformation and business performance, Journal of Economic Perspectives 14(4): 23–48.
Dewan, S. & Min, C.-K. (1997). The substitution of information technology for other factors of production: A firm-level analysis, Management Science 43(12): 1660–1675.
Greenan, N. & Mairesse, J. (2000). Computers and productivity in France: Some evidence, Economics of Innovation and New Technology 9(3): 275–315.
Greene, W. H. (2000). Econometric Analysis, 4 edn, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.
Heckman, J. (1976). The common structure of statistical models of truncation, sample selection and limited dependent variables and a simple estimator for such model, Annals of Economic and Social Measurement 5: 475–492.
Hempell, T. (2005). What’s spurious? What’s real? Measuring the produc-tivity of ICT at the firm level, Empirical Economics 30(2): 427–464.
Henkel, J. & Kaiser, U. (2002). Fremdvergabe von IT-Dienstleistungen aus personalwirtschaftlicher Sicht, Discussion Paper 02-11, ZEW Mannheim.
Heshmati, A. (2003). Productivity growth, efficiency and outsourcing in man-ufacturing and service industries, Journal of Economic Surveys 17(1): 79–112.
Ihaka, R. & Gentleman, R. (1996). R: A language for data analysis and graphics, Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics 5(3): 299–314.
Lamberti, H.-J. (2003). Mit IT-Sourcing zu einer neuen Stufe der Indutrial-isierung im Bankbetrieb, Zeitschrift für das gesamte Kreditwesen 6: 307–309.
Licht, G. & Moch, D. (1999). Innovation and information technology in services, Canadian Journal of Economics 32(2): 363–382.
Lichtenberg, F. R. (1995). The output contributions of computer equipment and personnel: A firm-level analysis, Economics of Innovation and New Technology 3: 201–217.
Maddala, G. S. (1983). Limited-dependent and qualitative variables in econometrics, Econometric Society Monographs No. 4, Cambridge University Press.
Müller, M. (2001). Estimation and testing in generalized partial linear models — a comparative study, Statistics and Computing 11: 299–309.
Prantl, S. (2001). Financial distress, liquidations and subsidization of young firms, Doctoral dissertation, University of Mannheim, Germany.
Severini, T. A. & Staniswalis, J. G. (1994). Quasi-likelihood estimation in semiparametric models, Journal of the American Statistical Association 89: 501–511.
Severini, T. A. & Wong, W. H. (1992). Generalized profile likelihood and conditionally parametric models, Annals of Statistics 20: 1768–1802.
Staniswalis, J. G. & Thall, P. F. (2001). An explanation of generalized profile likelihoods, Statistics and Computing 11: 293–298.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2006 Physica-Verlag Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Bertschek, I., Müller, M. (2006). Productivity Effects of IT-Outsourcing: Semiparametric Evidence for German Companies. In: Sperlich, S., Härdle, W., Aydınlı, G. (eds) The Art of Semiparametrics. Contributions to Statistics. Physica-Verlag HD. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-7908-1701-5_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-7908-1701-5_9
Publisher Name: Physica-Verlag HD
Print ISBN: 978-3-7908-1700-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-7908-1701-0
eBook Packages: Mathematics and StatisticsMathematics and Statistics (R0)