"Globalization" and Vertical Structure
American Economic Review · 2000 · Volume 90 · Issue 5
Abstract
This paper analyzes the effects of international openness on vertical integration. Vertical integration can confer a negative externality, by thinning the market for inputs and thus worsening opportunism problems; this induces strategic complementarity and multiple equilibria in the integration decision, thus providing a theory of different "industrial systems" or "industrial cultures" in ex ante identical countries. International openness thickens the market, facilitating leaner, less integrated firms, thus providing gains from international openness quite different from those that are familiar from trade theory. This may be taken as one theory of "outsourcing," "downsizing," and "Japanization" as consequences of "globalization."
Keywords
Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies, Industrial Organization and Macroeconomics: Industrial Structure and Structural Change, Industrial Price Indices, Economic Integration, Firm Organization and Market Structure
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