Effects of International Outsourcing and High-tech Capital on Total Factor Productivity: The Case of Iran's High-tech Industries

International outsourcing and intermediate goods trade as a signal of economic globalization have been in progress, one of the benefits of technology transfer, acquire foreign technology with higher efficiency, as technology spillovers author to increased productivity of local firms and technology transfer spillovers. In this study, an objective is to investigate the effects of international outsourcing, high-tech capital, foreign direct investment spillovers and capital stock of R&D on total factor productivity in selected high-tech industries in Iran. we have specified a theoretical framework, and then estimated its empirical version by the panel data econometric method for the selected high-tech industries in Iran during the period (2000-2012). The results show that the estimated coefficient of international outsourcing (OS) is statistically significant at the 5% of significance level. The results also indicate a significant positive effect of high-tech capital and FDI spillovers on total factor productivity in the selected Iran’s high-tech industries. However, the results show that the R&D capital stock has not been statistically significant in the estimated total factor productivity equation for such industries