During the 1970s, Japan supplanted the United States as the world leader in steel production, automobile manufacturing, and consumer electronics. Are the Japanese poised to repeat these successes in the semiconductor industry? This question has vast potential significance, because semiconductor technology holds the key to competitiveness in high technology, one of America's last bastions of industrial supremacy. This book, the product of years of joint research by a multidisciplinary team of American and Japanese scholars, analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of each country's semiconductor...

A pioneering political-scientific history. . . . Lucidly composed, meticulously documented, and handsomely presented.--The Annals A fascinating and compelling story of the beginnings of the Chinese nuclear weapon program.--Arms Control Today

Over the postwar period, the scope of industrial policy has expanded markedly. Governments in virtually all advanced industrial countries have extended the visible hand of the state in assisting specific industries or individual companies. Although greater government involvement in some countries has lessened the dislocations brought about by slower growth rates, industrial policy has also caused or exacerbated a number of other problems, including distortions in the allocation of capital and labor and trade conflicts that undermine the postwar system of free trade. Only Japan is widely cited...