On the Determinants of the Efficiency (Comparative Advantages and Disadvantages) of the Information Industries in Japan

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The objective of this study was to investigate why the performance of the IT industries in Japan had not been as remarkable as those in U.S. It is intended that, in the long run, this study can contribute to the formation of public policies toward the development of IT industries in Japan. We concentrated on the supply side of IT industries ; comparison of Japan and U.S. with regard to the utilization and the penetration of IT services is an interesting and important research subject, which will be left for work in the future.This study first observes the following : the products and the services of IT industries have characteristics different from those in most manufacturing industries. In manufacturing industries, deep coordination plays a significant role, and Japanese producers exhibited remarkable performance on their deep coordination capability. In contrast with this, in IT industries, open and wide coordination is important. Japanese producers, however, did not have the capability of open and wide coordination needed to compete with U.S. producers in IT industries. In order to improve the capability of open and wide coordination in Japanese producers, it is necessary for them to improve the capability for information processing within the producers organization.In this study, we performed empirical studies to investigate the observation stated above by examining import and export statistics in IT and other industries. We affirmatively accepted the following hypothesis : "in IT industries, Japanese producers export those products which are produced all at once and fitted to deep coordination such as computer displays and printers, whereas U.S. producers export those products which are fitted to open and wide coordination such as desk-top computers and network services."