International sourcing
Why are these statistics needed?
International sourcing (IS) refers to the total or partial cross-border movement of business functions by an enterprise to another location outside of the compiling country. Economic policymaking requires high-quality statistics on how and where enterprises are sourcing specific business functions. This new demand stems from the mainstreaming of domestic and international sourcing strategies by enterprises across size, industry classifications, and economic territory. International sourcing statistics can help statisticians and policymakers measure and monitor organisational and spatial patterns in national, regional, and global value chains and allow the effects of these patterns – on employment, wages, innovation, skills, firm survival, and turnover – to be measured.
Why are they experimental?
Although IS statistics are important for different user groups, relevant data are scarce. Eurostat has been working with National Statistical Institutes since 2007 on surveys to estimate some elements of IS statistics via the International sourcing surveys (IS survey). The results of the survey, conducted in EU and EFTA countries in 2021, are presented the article International sourcing, business functions and global value chains.
The data and questionnaires of all voluntary IS surveys conducted so far are experimental. The questions have been changed significantly throughout the different survey iterations.
New and untested parts of the Global Value Chains (GVC) arrangements were introduced in the fourth survey to capture GVC trade. However, the IS questions remained relatively similar to the previous surveys.
The outcomes of this last voluntary survey will feed into the creation of the first mandatory GVC survey under European Business Statistics, to be organised in 2024, which will in large part include the IS statistics. Thus, IS statistics can conceptually be considered as a part of the more extensive GVC statistics. Even though most of the data is already published, Eurostat has now decided to label them as experimental to better stimulate user feedback on the topic in view of the future compulsory data collection.
How are they produced?
The data are collected through voluntary surveys of the business economy using a specific reference period, most commonly a three-year period. The EU and EFTA countries participating had applied for Eurostat grants and had followed a common methodological approach to capture international sourcing and other GVC data.
The detailed methodology used in the last survey can be found in the metadata file entitled Global value chains and international sourcing statistics - experimental statistics (iss).
Feedback
To help Eurostat improve these experimental statistics, users and researchers are kindly invited to give us their feedback by email:
- How useful do you consider the IS data and the published analysis?
- What do you need the IS data for, and how did you access this kind of information in the past?
- Would you have any comments or suggestions for improving the IS methodology?
- What other data breakdowns would you like to see?
- What sort of analysis based on IS tables would bring added value in your field?