The benefits of an international division of labour is never illustrated more clearly than in small developed nations like Denmark. Without many natural resources such countries can never be self sufficient and they need access to foreign markets in order for their firms to specialise and utilize economics of scale. The specialisation chosen is mainly in low-tech goods, where the risk of sudden domestically damaging changes in technology or demand are relatively small. Besides such general features of small developed nations, the Danish case has some special characteristics, which distinguishes it from many other nations and regions. One important feature is the century-old, deep-rooted egalitarian beliefs of the society which during the last century has intermixed with the growth of the public sector in shaping not only the welfare state, but also a strongly consensus-seeking political system - the negotiated economy - incorporating all major groups in the economy. Recently, the development towards a knowledge based world economy has increased the importance of another feature with an small egalitarian country: the kind of trust-relations, that come into existence, when everyone in an industry has known everybody else through many years. The international industrial competitiveness of the country's vast majority of small, export oriented firms are not only favoured by a reasonable adequate macro-economic policy but further enhanced by the ease in the exchange of information resulting from established trust-relations.
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.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies in its series DRUID Working Papers with number
96-6.
Find related papers by JEL classification: L10 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - General L20 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - General O1 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development O31 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Grossman, Gene M. & Helpman, Elhanan, 1995.
"Technology and trade,"
Handbook of International Economics,
in: G. M. Grossman & K. Rogoff (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 25, pages 1279-1337
Elsevier.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Gene M. Grossman & Elhanan Helpman, 1994.
"Technology and Trade,"
NBER Working Papers
4926, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)
Did you know? You can include your works in the database easily by uploading them on the Munich Personal RePEc Archive (MPRA) if you do not have access to an institutional RePEc archive.