ABSTRACT
The technology of semiconductor production is one of the most complexes in all manufacturing. The structure of the European semiconductor industry is similar to that of the Japanese in its dominance by large vertically integrated systems firms and its comparative lack of entrepreneurial start-up ventures. The technological, structural, and strategic characteristics of the worldwide microelectronics that people have so far highlighted are an important part of the overall picture of that industry. The competition between American and Japanese semiconductor firms thus shapes up as one between groups with fundamentally different characteristics. European firms are a mixture of the Japanese and American models. Semiconductor production in the United States is dominated by the merchant industry, that is, by firms who produce principally for sale on the open market rather than for internal consumption. Interdependence in the sense of market exchange has long enjoyed the sanction of conventional economic theory and antitrust practice.
