Good Jobs and the Cutting Edge: The U.S. Machine Tool Industry and Sustainable Prosperity

Robert Forrant
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Robert Forrant: The Jerome Levy Economics Institute

Macroeconomics from EconWPA

Abstract: A principal focus of the paper is a comparative analysis of the development of computer numerically controlled machine tools in the U.S. and Japan. Japan's ability to wrest global machine tool preeminence from the U.S. grew out of its successful development of this technology. The first section of the paper contains a brief history of the industry and documents the decline of production and employment after 1970. Section two describes the industry's failure to resolve the problems caused by extreme new order cyclicality. Section three reviews the history of numerical control machine tool development in the U.S. and Japan. In section four and the conclusion various reasons for the industry's collapse are discussed.

JEL-codes: E (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1997-12-18
Note: Type of Document - Acrobat PDF; prepared on IBM PC ; to print on PostScript; pages: 31; figures: included
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http://129.3.20.41/eps/mac/papers/9712/9712008.pdf (application/pdf)

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