This paper explores various strategic options available to Japanese firms faced with the increasing market pressures in the global economy. Whether Japanese firms are able to retain the competitive edge will depend on the continuing gains in their manufacturing capability, their capacity to...

This paper argues that the single most important factor that explains East Asia's development success was its fast structural transformation toward industrialization, manufacturing in particular. Workers moved out of agriculture into manufacturing, and the sector diversified and upgraded its...

Although there exists a vast literature on convergence and divergence of income levels across countries or regions at the aggregate level, there is only little work on convergence and/or diver- gence processes of productivity and wage levels at the more disaggregated industrial level. These are...

After analysing the evolution of exports from the large Latin American countries over the last decade, and examining on a case by case basis the determinants for each country's performance, this study concludes that competitiveness in the manufacturing sectors of most countries in the region...

In this study, a new sample of 38 manufacturing firms from Cameroon is examined for the period 1980-95. A production function and an export function are estimated in order to study the determinants of Total Factor Productivity (TFP) and export performance. The results demonstrate a mutually...

Manufacturing in Latin America and the Caribbean region (LAC) faces severe competitive stresses as it integrates into the global economy. It is not, on the whole, coping well. Though it was the first region in the developing world - in the post-war era - to liberalize on international trade and...