This study investigates the features and determinants of the horizontal and vertical intra-industry trade (HIIT and VIIT, respectively) and firms' investment strategies of the information technology (IT) industry in the Asian, European Union (EU) and US markets from 1996 to 2005. The respective evolutions of the HIIT and VIIT of the IT industry indicate that HIIT has often dominated VIIT in the IT industry, which is obviously contrary to the present pattern of world trade. The empirical results further reveal the principal pattern of the IT firms' foreign direct investment strategies as facilitating the market rather than seeking efficiency in the host regions. The effect of revealed comparative advantage in relation to VIIT and HIIT demonstrates that vertical specialization is significant between Asia and the EU whereas horizontal specialization plays a key role between Asia and the US. The Asian financial crisis significantly promoted VIIT in regard to Asian IT firms in the US market. Finally, regional trade associations such as the EU and Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) have strengthened the vertical specialization of EU IT firms in Asian countries.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.