Outbound links can have an effect on a page's PR, the more outbound links to external sites on a home page, the less PR gets circulated within your site and consequently the less PR those internal pages pass back to the home page.
As far as ranking goes, the anchor text of a link on a page probably carries weight for the linking page because the markup gives the anchor text some emphasis.
Outbound links should be for the benefit of your visitors, linking to sites that would be helpful to your users also adds value to your site. Too many outbound links can hurt you...keep that in mind.
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