Multiplant strategy under core-periphery structure

A typical implicit assumption on monopolistic competition models for trade and economic geography is that firms can produce and sell only at one place. This paper fallows endogenous determination of the number of plants in a new economic geography model and examine the stable outcomes of organization choice between single-plant and multi-plant in two regions. We explicitly consider the firms' trade-off between larger economies of scale under single plant configuration and the saving in interregional transport costs under multi-plant configuration. We show that organization change arises under decreasing transportation costs and observe several organization configurations under a generalized cost function.

Linked versus Non-linked Firms in Innovation: The Effects of Economies of Network in Agglomeration in East Asia

This paper proposes a new mechanism linking innovation and network in developing economies to detect explicit production and information linkages and investigates the testable implications of these linkages using survey data gathered from manufacturing firms in East Asia. We found that firms with more information linkages tend to innovate more, have a higher probability of introducing new goods, introducing new goods to new markets using new technologies, and finding new partners located in remote areas. We also found that firms that dispatched engineers to customers achieved more innovations than firms that did not. These findings support the hypothesis that production linkages and face‐to‐face communication encourage product and process innovation.

日系中小サプライヤーの中国市場開拓に関する一考察 -- 日本的生産システムの海外展開の視点から

本稿では，日本的生産システムの海外展開の視点から，日系中小サプライヤーの中国市場開拓の現状を検討した。現時点で，中小サプライヤーの大多数は依然として日系企業を中心に取引を展開している。しかし，非日系向けの販売に成功した中小企業も出現するようになり，日本的生産システムと他国の生産システムが徐々に融合し始めている。非日系企業と取引を展開する中小サプライヤーは「国際派」と「現状維持派」に分類されるが，「国際派」のほうは経営の現地化を積極的に進めているだけでなく，日本的取引慣行の強みも発揮している。その過程でさまざまな技術情報が顧客のほうへ流れるようになり，その成長に寄与している。