A study of how latecomers catch up in high-tech industries and modern services, based on an in-depth analysis of Taiwan's premier enterprises and government policies. In this book Alice Amsden and Wan-wen Chu cover new ground by analyzing the phenomenon of high-end catch-up. They study how leading firms from the most advanced latecomer countries like Taiwan have increased their market share in mature high-tech industries and services. The profits that true innovators in these industries once enjoyed have already declined, but profit rates are still above average. The latecomer firm that succeeds in capturing these rents earns "second-mover" advantage. Amsden and Chu examine the successful second movers in electronics and modern services. The critical factors, they show, are the government policies and large-scale firms that drive skills, speed, and scale. R&D in Taiwan was usually undertaken in conjunction with government labs, which prepared the way for local production of the next hot, mature product. Speed in ramping up at the firm level depended on project execution capabilities and access to capital. Scale proved to be an absolute entry requirement in modern service sectors, and was crucial to win subcontracts from leading foreign firms and to secure key components from world-class suppliers in the electronics industry. The authors challenge current orthodoxy along two lines. First, they argue that government played an important role through interventions that went beyond the market model and overcame the limitations of networking. Interventions possibly promoted mature high-tech even more than mid-tech. Second, the entrepreneurs in Taiwan were nationally owned large-scale firms rather than multinational companies.

"The profits that true innovators in these industries once enjoyed have already declined, but profit rates are still above average. The latecomer firm that succeeds in capturing these rents earns "second mover" advantage. Amsden and Chu examine the successful second movers in electronic and modern services. The critical factors, they show, are the government policies and large-scale firms that drive skills, speed, and scale."--BOOK JACKET.

Examines the nature of late adolescent and adult thought and concludes that there is describable and significant cognitive development during those stages of life which goes beyond Piaget's stage of formal operations.

Industrialization supported by industrial hubs has been widely associated with structural transformation and catch-up. But while the direct economic benefits of industrial hubs are significant, their value lies first and foremost in their contribution as incubators of industrialization, production and technological capability, and innovation. The Oxford Handbook of Industrial Hubs and Economic Development adopts an interdisciplinary approach to examine the conceptual underpinnings, review empirical evidence of regions and economies, and extract pertinent lessons for policy reasearchers and practitioners on the key drivers of success and failure for industrial hubs. This Handbook illustrates the diverse and complex nature of industrial hubs and shows how they promote industrialization, economic structural transformation, and technological catch-up. It explores the implications of emerging issues and trends such as environmental protection and sustainability, technological advancement, shifts in the global economy, and urbanization.

The papers in this volume were presented at a Mellon-Sawyer Seminar held at the University of Oxford in 2009-2010, which sought to investigate side by side the two important movements of conversion that frame late antiquity: to Christianity at its start, and to Islam at the other end. Challenging the opposition between the two stereotypes of Islamic conversion as an intrinsically violent process, and Christian conversion as a fundamentally spiritual one, the papers seek to isolate the behaviours and circumstances that made conversion both such a common and such a contested phenomenon. The spread of Buddhism in Asia in broadly the same period serves as an external comparator that was not caught in the net of the Abrahamic religions. The volume is organised around several themes, reflecting the concerns of the initial project with the articulation between norm and practice, the role of authorities and institutions, and the social and individual fluidity on the ground. Debates, discussions, and the expression of norms and principles about conversion conversion are not rare in societies experiencing religious change, and the first section of the book examines some of the main issues brought up by surviving sources. This is followed by three sections examining different aspects of how those principles were - or were not - put into practice: how conversion was handled by the state, how it was continuously redefined by individual ambivalence and cultural fluidity, and how it was enshrined through different forms of institutionalization. Finally, a topographical coda examines the effects of religious change on the iconic holy city of Jerusalem.

Why do people identify with growing late modern churches – and does identification lead to morally transforming commitments beyond late modern consumerism? This case study presents findings that may inspire both social scientists and theological practitioners to new forms of thinking.

Averil Cameron is one of the leading historians of late antiquity and Byzantium. This collection (Cameron’s third in the Variorum series) discusses the changing approach among historians of the later Roman empire from the 1960s to the present and the articles reproduced have been chosen to reflect both these wider changes in treatments of the subject as well as Cameron’s own development as a historian over many decades. It provides a revealing and important survey of some profound historiographical changes. Her volume contains fundamental papers and reviews that tell a story in which she has played a leading part. They move from her early days as an ancient historian to her important contribution in the establishment of the field of late antiquity and point to her later work as a Byzantinist, a trajectory rivalled by few other scholars. The book will be important for scholars and students of the later Roman empire and late antiquity, and for anyone interested in the inheritance of Edward Gibbon, the perennial questions about the end of the Roman empire and its supposed decline, or the emergence of Islam in the early seventh century and its relation to the late antique world. (CS 1113).