International service tradability: Understanding the offshoring of services

- Authors: Pierre-Yves Leo and Jean Philippe
- Main Title: Latin America's Emergence in Global Services , pp 39-57
- Publication Date: August 2014
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.18356/fd94837a-en
- Language: English
In industrialized countries, the interest in the internationalization of
services remains on centre stage: in the WTO Doha negotiation, the agreement on the pursuit of the
liberalization process is at stake because of the fear of job losses. Former studies show that
service firms follow two objectives in the internationalization process: to conquer new markets to
take advantage of new growth opportunities or to improve global competitiveness by outsourcing
specific activities. These two motives now seem to be converging. Therefore, the main challenge is
not to stem the direct job losses caused by firms settling abroad, but to evaluate the net result
between these job losses and the benefits of the international market expansion in terms of newly
created jobs. This chapter explores how service firms are organized and what modalities they use to
expand at the international level; analyses the mechanisms of delocalization to identify which
factors allow service activities to develop abroad; and discusses the determinants of the
international movement of services, which is a first step towards modelling their offshoring
probability.
© United Nations
ISBN (PDF):
9789210560214
Book DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18356/5b6131c0-en
Related Subject(s):
Economic and Social Development
Sustainable Development Goals:
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