Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/56871 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2010
Series/Report no.: 
Jena Economic Research Papers No. 2011,003
Publisher: 
Friedrich Schiller University Jena and Max Planck Institute of Economics, Jena
Abstract: 
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.
Subjects: 
international trade
business services
gravity model
distance
time zones
digital divide
JEL: 
F10
F14
F20
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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