Title: Outsourcing: three long run predictions

Authors: Gloria Gonzalez-Rivera

Addresses: Department of Economics, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521, USA

Abstract: We argue that exporting jobs – outsourcing - is a market-based mechanism that has the potential to distribute wealth and raise the standards of living around the globe. International trade theories dictate that countries will attain mutual gains when they export those goods for which their relative costs of production are comparatively lower. A low wage environment is the Ricardian |comparative advantage| of developing countries. We predict that: the labour supply of a developing country will become less elastic in the long run as a new worker, who demands social protection, emerges; world labour markets will become as efficient as the present world capital markets since qualified labour has become a mobile factor of production; outsourcing will bring political reforms to the existent international organisations, which should add to their agendas, the tutelage of the welfare gains indirectly brought by outsourcing.

Keywords: comparative advantage; globalisation; welfare gains; international institutions; outsourcing; developing countries; labour supply; political reforms; international organisations.

DOI: 10.1504/GBER.2005.007618

Global Business and Economics Review, 2005 Vol.7 No.2/3, pp.226 - 233

Published online: 20 Aug 2005 *

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