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.

Reviews the evolution of strategic alliances involving U.S. and Japanese companies in the semiconductor industry, and analyzes whether alliances can contribute to the renewal of an industry faced with stiff competition from Japan. Provides an overview of the changing nature of technology linkages in this important industry.

The semiconductor industry is at the forefront of current tensions over international trade and investment in high technology industries. This book traces the struggle between U.S. and Japanese semiconductor producers from its origins in the 1950s to the novel experiment with "managed trade" embodied in the U.S.-Japan Semiconductor Trade Arrangements of 1986, and the current debate over continuation of elements of that agreement. Flamm provides a thorough analysis of this experiment and its consequences for U.S. semiconductor producers and users, and presents extensive discussion of patterns of competition within the semiconductor industry. Using a wealth of new data, he argues that a fundamentally new trade regime for high technology industries is needed to escape from the present impasse. He lays out the alternatives, from laissez-faire to managed trade, and argues strongly for a new set of international ground rules to regulate acceptable behavior by government and firms in high-tech industries. Flamm's detailed analysis of competition within the semiconductor industry will be of great value to those interested in the industrial organization of high-technology industries, as well as those concerned with trade and technology policy, international competition, and Japanese industrial policies.