The Globalization of Automobile Markets

Automobile markets are a prime example of the several steps in the second wave of globalization. While after the II WW US car companies moved to produce in the European Communities to exploit proximity to market and economies of scale, the second wave was characterized by the move in production of Japanese firms to the US market in the 1980s. Using new methods of production this process led to the appearance of fragmentation of production and value chains. The third wave corresponds to the globalization of markets by integration of EU-NAFTA-ASIAN markets, although value chains remain regionalized: production in these three main markets responds to different consumer tastes, but multinationals are trying to reduce the number of platforms worldwide. Transportation and other trade costs remain important across those regions and large markets explain location which has been characterized by agglomeration economies. . It was after the mid-1990s and particularly in the 2000s that China arose has a major producer and consumer of automobiles. The paper "Development Theory and Globalization, the Second Wave: A Reinterpretation" to which these Appendices apply is available at the following URL: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2444601 Appendix II for this paper is available at the following URL: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2444625