Stephen S. Cohen

Manufacturing innovation and american industrial competitiveness.

An erosion of manufacturing capacities has contributed substantially to Americas trade problems. The difficulty lies not in U.S. machines and technology, but in U.S. strategies for automation and the goals American firms seek to achieve through production innovation. Mass production and administrative hierarchies created the basis for American industrial preeminence in the years after World War II. There is substantial evidence that American firms have been unable to adopt or adapt to the production innovations emerging abroad. A sustained weakness in manufacturing capabilities could endanger the technology base of the country.

Countertrade, Offsets, Barter, and Buybacks

Countertrade, offsets, barter, and buybacks have existed since before money was invented but over the last few centuries have been treated as marginal phenomena. However, current estimates of the volume of these activites range from 8 to 30 percent of world trade and could reach 50% by the year 2000. What is surprising is not just the imprecision of the data but the fact that we have no control over this enormous volume of international transactions. This article examines these forms of trade, their causes and policy implications, and their future impact on our open trade system.

Double or Nothing: Open Trade and Competitive Industry

_J?^rade disputes have moved from the business page to the front page. No longer can they be considered ordinary commercial frictions to be dealt with in a routine way through existing institu tions and within agreed rules. Nor are they simply the unhappy consequences of an international economic decline that will melt away with the first burst of economic resurgence. It is becoming obvious that a basic long-term conflict over na tional economic position and advantage underlies many of the present trade troubles. In the narrowest sense it is a question of which countries will create substantial commercial advantage in the growth industries of the future, which countries will be able to defend employment in todays mainline industries during that tran sition, and which countries will move up to substantial roles in traditional sectors. More broadly, the very international rules de termining the appropriate roles for government in national and international economic life are being challenged and the premises of multilateral trade arrangements are being questioned by a series of state-centered industrial development and trade strategies. Trade conflicts are already generating tensions that directly affect political relations between America and its allies, and among the allies. The open trade system?free exchange of goods among countries?has been a part of the foundation of Americas inter national leadership. Sustaining an open trade system in the years since the Second World War required that the American economy be able to absorb?without substantial domestic political disloca tion?the impact of foreign strategies for adjustment and develop

Industrial Policy and International Competition in High Technology

A trio of essays on how current U.S. trade policies and the management of R&D in high technology are providing an edge to Japan in international competition. Specific policy actions are necessary to control Japan9s current ability to block capital formation in the U.S. and get the upper hand in international trade at the expense of American high tech industries.

Inter-Organizational Knowledge Transfer as a Source of Innovation: The Role of Absorptive Capacity and Information Management Systems

The radical improvements and massive diffusion of information and communication technologies within the last decade have fostered the development and exchange of new knowledge. Firms realize that they now compete in their abilities to access, acquire and appraise new information in order to enhance their innovation capacity by applying it. Davenport and Prusak (1998) note that though spontaneous and unstructured transfers of knowledge routinely take place across organizational and geographical boundaries, independently from the management of the process, companies are now expected to have well defined systems of knowledge management. A substantial literature addressing the competitive dimensions of information management is, therefore, developing. The important and not yet solved questions concern the conditions needed for effective information and knowledge transfer and how to establish them (Zahra and George, 2002). The exploration of these conditions is the principal concern of this essay which studies three very different kinds of firms: new, venture firms (our principal focus); serial acquirers (Cisco), operating at scale in world markets but rooted in a local ecology of venture firms, and Japanese majors, such as Toshiba, NEC and Fujitsu operating, in their rapid growth period, far from such an environment.

California's Missile Gap

The California economy is not recovering from recession at the same pace as the rest of the nation. At the core of its persistent economic problems lies a structural change in the California economy—the cutbacks in military procurement in the Los Angeles area. It is now on a new and lower growth path. Washington will not be able to step in and restore the previous level of spending: the amounts are just too big. And market forces will not, by themselves, overcome the states structural problems. If it is not to continue to lag behind the rest of the United States, California must make policy changes to encourage business expansion and retention. Because heroic changes in Californian politics, however overdue and desirable, are not realistic, we have to look to some simple measures that California should take to begin to climb onto a higher growth trajectory.

France in the troubled world economy

Spend your time even for only few minutes to read a book. Reading a book will never reduce and waste your time to be useless. Reading, for some people become a need that is to do every day such as spending time for eating. Now, what about you? Do you like to read a book? Now, we will show you a new book enPDFd france in the troubled world economy that can be a new way to explore the knowledge. When reading this book, you can get one thing to always remember in every reading time, even step by step.

The Mercantilist Challenge to the Liberal International Trade Order

The international trade conflicts that now appear so prominently in the press are not simply ordinary trade frictions that can be dealt with in a routine way through existing institutions and within agreed rules. These new conflicts are the signs of fractures in a mature trading system, fractures appearing under the weight of problems and events that were not central when the current arrangements were established and that cannot be easily resolved within its logic and rules. While the objective of an open trading system remains important, the task of sustaining open trade is likely to prove ever more difficult because of state intervention in business, itself a response to changes in production and in the international division of labor as well as to the economic troubles of the 1970s and 1980s. Present trade problems will prove more enduring than the political controversy over pipeline sanctions, the aggressively low value of the yen, or even the severe economic downturn that has exacerbated sectoral tensions. Consequently, American policy faces a real dilemma because policies that would effectively defend the competitive position of American firms might further undermine the open trading system itself. Basic conflict over national economic position and advantage underlies many of the present trade troubles. In the narrowest sense, the question is which countries will create substantial commercial advantage in the growth industries of the future and which ones will be able to defend employment in todays mainline industries during that sectoral transition. More broadly, the very international rules setting the appropriate roles for government in national and international economic life are being challenged and the premises of multi-lateral trade arrangements are being questioned. There are those who believe that reordering the international monetary system and, in particular, setting stable and workable exchange rate parities, would resolve many of the sectoral trade problems we now encounter. The present valuation of the dollar and rapid shifts in