manufacturing

The paper analyses micro-level data from the U.S. and European semiconductor manufacturers. In particular, the authors focus on the plants undertaking the wafer manufacturing processes.

This paper examines the relationship between agglomeration economies and regional productivity in the manufacturing sector in Finland. The results find in favour of regional specialisation more than diversification even if some differences can be seen between the manufacturing sub-sectors.

This paper aims at exploring and analysing the trade-location relationship in candidate countries during the 1990s. Two empirical evidences are provided: current trends in spatial organisation of manufacturing production and the role played by the economic integration process with
the EU in partially or totally shaping such patterns.

Using entropy indices and associated bootstrap tests, the authors describe the distribution of economic sectors across Western European regions over the 1975-2000 period. It is found that manufacturing has become gradually more concentrated, although the locational bias towards central regions has become weaker.

The authors examine the dimensions of China’s competitive threat in the 1990s, benchmarking competitive performance by technology and market, and finds that market share losses are so far mainly in low technology products, with Japan being the most vulnerable market. They analyse market share changes and highlight product groups that are directly or indirectly exposed to a competitive threat.

The authors analyze the influence of economic geography on the cost structure of manufacturing firms by firm size for eight industry sectors in India. Findings indicate that industrial diversity is the only economic geography variable that has a significant, consistent, and substantial cost-reducing effect for firms, particularly small firms.

The Info Brief for the National Science Foundation found that high-tech manufacturing has grown substantially over the last decade in Latin America. The report states that the combined high-tech manufacturing production of seven Latin American countries has increased 93 percent between 1991 and 2000.

National Institute of Standards and Technology Senior Economist George Tasseys report indicates future U.S. competitiveness hinges on diversification and broadening of the technology-based manufacturing sector. The report lays out the critical role manufacturing and manufacturing R&D plays in the U.S. economy, presents the dire forecast for low-research and development (R&D) intensive manufacturers, and presents a framework for analyzing federal R&D investment strategies consistent with a national innovation system.

Applying insights from theoretical tax competition models, the study of manufacturing investment and taxes in the U.S. states makes four contributions to the empirical tax competition literature.

The report from the Center for Rural Policy and Development and Minnesota Technology Inc. finds that manufacturing jobs in rural Minnesota numbered almost 120,000 in 2000, a 25 percent increase since 1990, while manufacturing jobs in the states metro area increased only 1.7 percent during the same period. The study was the third part of the 2002 Rural Minnesota Internet Study, an annual collection of surveys designed to monitor computer, Internet and broadband use.