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CIAO DATE: 12/5/2006
The Politics and Economics of Offshore Outsourcing
N. Gregory Mankiw, Phillip Swagel
December 2005
Introduction
During the presidential campaign of 2004, no economic issue generated more heat or shed less light than the debate over offshore outsourcing. This fact was probably apparent at the time to any economist who followed politics, but it was felt especially acutely by the authors of this paper. We were then working at the Council of Economic Advisers as, respectively, chairman and chief of staff. While the job of the CEA is to focus on the economics of current policy debates, the environment in which that job is performed is highly political, especially in an election year. To some extent, therefore, this paper is a report from inside the eye of a storm....
