Obsevations Regarding Special Topics

Abstract

Industrialized countries still account for two thirds of global trade today. Despite this fact, centers of global economic growth spread not only within North America in the 1990s, some of them also shifted to Southern Asia during the decade. At the same time, newly industrialized countries were able to substantially improve their positions on international markets for high-tech goods. This group’s integration into the global economy has not only increased the pressure on the “simple jobs” factor. The field of players in the global contest over innovation has broadened as well. In particular, competition has gotten tougher in markets with medium innovation potential and larger margins for imitation, where newly industrialized countries can bid from a more favorable income and cost position. On the other hand, highly developed countries not only have to compete on price in these markets but on technology and quality to an ever-growing degree as well. Asia’s newly industrialized countries have scored significant success in individual product groups — such as the entire information technology and electrical engineering fields, and photographical and optical products.⁹¹ Expanding beyond their standardized product categories of the past, these countries’ export success is due more and more to winning market shares in quality market segments as well.