The Internationalization of Economic Activity

跨国界活动和交易的日益复杂的格局是国际经济制度的特点，使它有别于以前原材料和制成品贸易占主导地位的情况。随着时间的推移，技术变革使生产商能够将其业务划分为更精细的部分，从而实现更高的专业化和效率。随着生产活动的进一步区分和分割，越来越有可能在地理上将它们分开。“全球化”可以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，包括与不相关的生产商保持一定距离的各种组成部分的“外包”（贸易），建立外国子公司从事组装和营销等活动（外国直接投资），与可能根据许可证生产或分销公司产品的外国实体签订长期和可能的排他性合同协议。设立研发和/或生产合资企业。需要研究将这些组织选择纳入国际贸易和投资理论的语料库。该项目发展了国际贸易和外国投资模型，这些模型以更丰富、更完整的企业理论为基础。这些模型使他们能够调查公司何时决定“内部”进行活动，何时决定“外包”，何时决定在本地进行内部活动，何时决定在国外进行，何时决定在国内进行外包，何时决定通过对外贸易进行外包。一个具有更完整的企业理论的贸易模型也将允许探索其他组织形式，如长期合同、经连关系、许可安排和合资企业。调查人员打算大量利用契约理论的最新进展。通过研究当各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契约时因投资激励减弱而导致的效率损失之间的权衡，契约理论家开发了一个框架，用于研究企业边界的决定因素。然而，这些工具很少被应用于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之后，研究者将解决一些重要的问题。首先，为什么战后时期的贸易增长比收入增长快得多，为什么零部件和生产性服务的贸易增长特别快？第二，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妨碍了政府对产业的监管能力？最后，日本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成为贸易的隐性壁垒？

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?