The Internationalization of Economic Activity

国际经济体系的特点是跨界活动和交易的模式日益复杂，有别于早先以原材料和制成品的公平贸易为主的模式。随着时间的推移，技术变革使生产商能够将他们的业务划分为更精细的部分，从而使每一项业务都更专业化和更有效率。随着生产活动的进一步区分和细分，在地理上将它们分开的可能性越来越大。“全球化”可以被定义为生产过程的各个环节在几个或许多不同的国家进行的过程。全球化包括各种不同的组织安排，包括与无关生产者(贸易)保持一定距离关系的各种组成部分的“外包”，设立外国子公司从事组装和营销等活动(直接外国投资)，与可能在许可证下生产或经销公司产品的外国实体签订长期的、可能是排他性的合同协议，以及为研发和(或)生产建立合资企业。需要进行研究，将这些组织选择纳入国际贸易和投资理论的语料库。这个项目开发了国际贸易和外国投资的模型，这些模型以更丰富、更完整的企业理论为基础。这样的模型使他们能够调查公司何时决定进行内部活动，何时进行外包，何时内部活动将在本地进行而不是在国外进行，以及何时外包将是国内的和何时通过对外贸易进行的。具有更完整的企业理论的贸易模式也将允许探索其他组织形式，如长期合同、经济合作关系、许可安排和合资企业。调查人员打算大量借鉴合同理论的最新进展。通过研究双方保持对自己特殊资产的控制时产生的更高效率与面对不完美合同时迟钝的投资激励可能导致的效率损失之间的权衡，契约理论家开发了一个框架，用于调查企业边界的决定因素。然而，这些工具很少被用来研究市场均衡背景下的垂直关系。在将更丰富的企业理论引入一般均衡贸易理论的语料库后，研究者将解决一些重要的问题。首先，为什么在战后时期，贸易增长远快于收入增长，为什么零部件和生产性服务业的贸易增长特别快？其次，全球化是否导致了美国和其他地方非熟练工人的相对工资下降？第三，经济活动的国际化是否会阻碍政府监管工业的能力？最后，在日本看到的长期供应商关系的经济动机是什么，这些关系在多大程度上是贸易的隐性障碍？

An increasingly complex pattern of cross-border activities and transactions characterizes the international economic system, distinguishing it from the earlier predominance of arms length trade in raw materials and finished goods. Over time, technological changes have enabled producers to divide their operations into ever finer segments, allowing greater specialization and efficiencies in each one. As the activities of production are further distinguished and segmented, it becomes increasingly possible to separate them geographically. "Globalization" may be defined as the process by which segments of the production process are carried out in several or many different countries. Globalization encompasses a variety of different organizational arrangements, including the 'outsourcing' of various components in arms-length relations with unrelated producers (trade), the establishment of foreign subsidiaries to undertake activities such as assembly and marketing (direct foreign investment), the entry into long-term and possibly exclusive contractual agreements with foreign entities who might produce under license or distribute a firms' products, and the establishment of joint ventures for R&D and/or production. Research is needed to bring these organizational choices into the corpus of international trade and investment theory. This project develops models of international trade and foreign investment that are underpinned by a richer and more complete theory of the firm. Such models allow them to investigate when firms will decide to undertake activities 'in-house' and when they will 'outsource,' when the in-house activities will be performed locally versus in foreign locations, and when the outsourcing will be domestic and when through foreign trade. A model of trade with a more complete theory of the firm will also allow exploration of other organizational forms, such as long-term contracts, keiretsu relationships, licensing arrangements, and joint ventures. The investigators intend to draw heavily on recent advances in contract theory. By investigating the trade-off between the greater efficiency that arises when each party maintains control of its own special assets and the loss of efficiency that can result from dulled investment incentives in the face of imperfect contracting, contract theorists have developed a framework for investigating the determinants of the boundaries of the firm. Rarely, however, have these tools been applied to study vertical relations in the context of market equilibrium.After introducing a richer theory of the firm into the corpus of general-equilibrium trade theory, the investigators will address a number of important questions. First, why has trade grown so much faster than income in the post-war period, and why has trade in components and producer services grown especially fast? Second, has globalization contributed to the declining relative wage of unskilled workers in the United States and elsewhere? Third, does the internationalization of economic activity hamper governments' ability to regulate industry? Finally, what are the economic motivations for the long-term supplier relationships seen in Japan, and to what extent do these relationships act as an implicit barrier to trade?