Local Agglomeration and Global Networks Of the Semiconductor Industry: a Comparative Study of U.S. and Japanese Firms

The objective of this study is to examine the spatial organization of the U.S. and Japanese firms in the semiconductor industry. Our analyses give special consideration to the nature of the activities undertaken in the semiconductor production processes, the nature of the firm organization, the nature of the firm ownership, and the geographical area of analysis. Our approach is essentially diagrammatic in order to incorporate all the above factors. Therefore, unlike past studies, our study places special emphasis on tracing the connections between the whole spatial chain of production activities. The result is that different stages within the semiconductor production process have different geographical features, and that even the same vertically integrated sectors in the semi†conductor industry that differ by Japanese or U.S. ownership have quite different geo†graphical organizations.