An Analysis about reverse offshoring

Abstract

Economies that traditionally benefited from offshoring are losing some of their strategical advantages, with a consequent increase in backshoring (i.e., reverse offshoring) by developed economies. This paper describes this phenomenon and tries to shed light, from an Italian perspective, on the current challenges, trends and debates of backshoring, and on its main determinants. A new phenomenon known as nearshoring is also analysed—this consists of relocating some previously offshored manufacturing activities so that they are now close to previous core locations, but not so close as to suffer from disagglomeration effects. Key words: offshoring, backshoring, and nearshoring. JEL Classification: R12, R30