Competitive Edge

During the 1970s, Japan supplanted the United States as the world leader in steel production, automobile manufacturing, and consumer electronics. Are the Japanese poised to repeat these successes in the semiconductor industry? This question has vast potential significance, because semiconductor technology holds the key to competitiveness in high technology, one of America's last bastions of industrial supremacy. This book, the product of years of joint research by a multidisciplinary team of American and Japanese scholars, analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of each country's semiconductor industry with reference to three major areas: technological innovation; the role of government, not only in specific policies directed toward the semiconductor industry, but also in the broader context of industrial policy, government-business relations, and the two political systems; and the influence of financial institutions, ties between banks and businesses, and corporate financing. The book provides, in short, a broad yet in-depth analysis of emerging industrial competition in high technology between the world's two largest market economies.