Download or read book The Economics of Vertical Disintegration written by D. G. McFetridge and published by Vancouver, B.C., Canada : Fraser Institute. This book was released on 1988 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the back cover: The fundamental question addressed by this study is the extent to which service functions formerly performed within industrial firms have been contracted out. If the service sector has grown primarily because manufacturing and other industries have contracted out janitorial, security and other business services, then there in not much economic significance to service sector growth. This also implies that observed declines in manufacturing employment may also represent nothing more than inter-sectoral shifts in the location of employment. This study breaks new ground in developing a series of statistical approaches to the measurement of contracting out. Based on a solid theoretical framework, three new empirical measures of contracting out are presented. The results vary somewhat by method but the overall conclusion is that contracting out is an important phenomenon.