- A-Z
- Jena Economic Resea...
- Volume 5
- International servi...
- Angeblicher Autor(in)
- Erschienen
- 5. Januar 2011
- Nummer des Discussion-Papers
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2011-003
- Schlagwort(e)
-
business services
digital divide
distance
gravity model
international trade
time zones
- Zusammenfsg.
-
The firms’ international fragmentation of production has recently widened its focus from outsourcing of intermediates to off-shoring of business services such as software program development and international call centre networks. Although a large number of business services are intangible and non-storable, gravity model estimates show that geographical distance between business partners is still relevant even when information and communication technologies (ICT) provide alternatives for face-to-face interaction. It has recently been argued that time zones can be a driving force of international service transactions by allowing for continuously operating over a 24 hours business day. In this paper, we find empirical evidence for the continuity effect in trade of business and commercial services which is even higher for trade with Non-OECD countries and robust to measurement and sample size. We show that the time zone effect in trading business services is dependent on the level of ICT infrastructure.
- article pub. typess JER
- Research article
- article languages JER
- Englisch
- JEL-Classification for JER
- F10 - General ; F14 - Country and Industry Studies of Trade ; F20 - General