Lars Lundberg

Technology, Resource Endowments and International Competitiveness

The paper evaluates the impact of technology together with resource endowments and economies of scale on international competitiveness in OECD countries. Knowledge capital stocks are obtained by cumulating R&D expenditure. Results show that competitiveness is determined not only by the R&D activity of the representative firm, but also by the size of domestic industry as well as economy wide stocks of knowledge, indicating the presence of local externalities. Further results point to the importance of economies of scale in R&D internal to the firm and of investment for introduction of embodied technical progress. Finally, the R&D impact differs between high- and low-tech industries as well as among countries.

Competition, Market Structure and Job Turnover

Does internationalization mean increased reallocation of employment among plants and thus higher adjustment costs? This paper studies the reallocation of jobs among plants in the Swedish economy 1986–97 using micro data. It turns out that the rate of job turnover is high in industries with high rates of innovation and employment growth, and low in concentrated industries with limited competition. However, we find no evidence for the view that increased openness to international competition would increase job turnover. In fact turnover is lower in export oriented industries where foreign ownership is frequent.

Technology, Factor Proportions and Competitiveness

This paper reports an attempt to explain changes in the industrial pattern of relative international competitiveness and specializ ation in the Swedish manufacturing industry during the period 1969-84 . The author evaluates the role of RD on the other hand, no indication was found of increased interna tional specialization on R&D-intensive products in Swedish industry. Copyright 1988 by The editors of the Scandinavian Journal of Economics.

The role of comparative costs for determining inter- and intra-industry trade with developing countries

Abstract The paper studies intra-industry trade of Sweden with developing countries. It uses a neoclassical two-factor multi-sector model, where it is assumed that goods are differentiated with respect to country of origin. In this model the share of intra-industry trade between countries with different relative factor prices will be low in sectors with extreme factor requirements, i.e., with very high or very low capital intensity. This hypothesis is tested on the share of intra-industry trade in Swedens trade with developing countries for a cross-section of industries, and largely confirmed by the statistical results.

European Economic Integration: A Nordic Perspective

A collection of papers on the issues of European economic integration and its consequences for the Nordic countries. It addresses historic and future effects of integration - on trade, specialization and industrial structure, competition and market concentration, and other aspects.

Comparative Costs and Elasticities of Substitution as Determinants of Inter- and Intra-Industry Trade

Intra-industry trade, i.e. the simultaneous imports and exports of the same statistical product group, has become an increasingly important part of world trade, in particular in the exchange of goods among developed countries (for a survey of findings see Tharakan, 1983). This fact has initiated empirical research on the causes of intra-industry trade. Attempts to explain differences in the share of intra-industry trade of total trade among different industries or product groups in terms of characteristics of the product or the market have been made, e.g. for the UK by Greenaway and Milner (1984), for the US by Toh (1982) and Bergstrand (1983), and for a sample of developed economies by Finger and De Rosa (1979), Loertscher and Wolter (1980) and Caves (1981). The explanatory variables used in these studies are generally assumed to capture some aspect of the concept of product differentiation. They include measures based on the statistical classification itself (e.g. subdivisions of the SITC or the BTN), as well as R&D costs, advertising expenditures, product age and measures of concentration and economies of scale. The basic hypothesis is that the higher the degree of product differentiation in an industry, the more intra-industry trade there will be.