Backshoring trends in global manufacturing: a survival analysis

There is a recent orientation worldwide toward repatriation of production activities to the home country (back-reshoring) or its nearby regions (near-reshoring). To date, reliable and quantitative evidence on the extent of this phenomenon is scanty and often of anecdotal nature. Moreover, practically nothing is known on the factors determining the length of the offshoring experience of companies. The aim of this paper is to throw light on these factors, by studying the duration of offshoring prior to the decision to reshore operations. To this end, we proceeded by building a firm-level data set based on secondary data, including 295 reshoring experiences enacted by manufacturers with production activities abroad. By using a survival modelling approach, we estimate two models encompassing different hypotheses about the distribution of off-shoring duration, namely a model assuming a Weibull distribution of survival times and a Cox proportional hazard model. Results from both models signal that the industry, the host country of offshoring, and the size of the firm are relevant in determining timing of back-reshoring.