Products Within The International Division Of Labor: Motive, Research, Mechanisms And Effects

With the barriers to international trade and the foreign investment disappearing, the whole world has become a tremendous global market since 1950's or 1960's. As the economy globalization accelerating the key elements resource flowing among countries, the increasing drastic competition makes the producers have to consider how to configure the key elements resource around the world to reduce the costs of production and exchange maximally. With this background, the essential change happens in the international specialization as its form tending towards disintegration as well as the international market being integrated increasingly. Disintegration means the various working procedures and working phases are accomplished in different countries during the product manufacture process and the intra-product international specialization, which regards the working procedures and the working phases as its object, comes into being. It not only brings the specialization based on the comparative advantages among countries from the product itself into its inner working procedures and processes, but also changes the global economy running mode greatly.Since the 1960's or 1970's, the theory horizon of economy has concerned about this economy phenomenon that the various working procedures and working phases in the product manufacture process being accomplished in various countries and the global production value chain are fragmented into several working phases. Various scholars made further research on this phenomenon with different point and achieved lots of valuable results, such as the studies for the supply chain, the value chain, outsourcing, Original Equipment Manufacture (OEM) in the Management, the study for industrial cluster in the Regional Economics, the studies for international production system, fragmented production, vertical specialization in the International Economics and etc.Referring to the relative existing literature, the studies for the value chain or global value chain always focus on the micro-level of enterprises. However, for the vertical specialty specification, it pays too attention to its macro-level. Since the multinational scattering production conduced by the intra-product international specialization is the embodiment of economy globalization progress, it influences the global economy from the micro-level of enterprise to the medium-level of industry, then to the macro-level of international specification. Therefore, only concerning about any aspect would not apprehend its whole system in the round.The thesis tries to integrate the study of micro-level in the intra-product international specialization running system with the industry upgrade and the global production specification, and make systemic and comprehensive researches on the intra-product international specialization: to analyze its intrinsic motivation with the traditional trade theories, the New Institutional Economics and the Econometrics as the primary tools; to study its internal system with the global value chain running system as the key thread; to discover its different effect on the various countries with the analysis for the its global trend; to form some countermeasure suggestions for advancing our status in the intra-product international specialization progress based on the above results together with its current situation of China.The thesis is divided into seven sections as follows:Chapter I: Introduction. It introduces its research background and significance, the domestic and foreign research actuality, its methods and structure, the main innovations and the insufficiencies in the thesis.Chapter II: Summary of the Intra-product International Specialization. This chapter is the foundation for another ones. First, following the science and technology development, it reviews the international specialization developing phases from its inter-industries to its intra-industry, then to its intra-product. Secondly, it reviews the traditional theories for the international specialization and the international trade in the point of the theory evolution. Thirdly, it gives a detailed statement and makes the distinctions for some basic definitions in the intra-product international specialization theory including its meaning, production mode and trade mode. Finally,it analyzes and summarizes its current conformation and the principal measure approach used.Chapter III: Analysis on the Motivation of the Intra-product International Specialization. The intra-product international specialization is the embodiment of the international specialization developing further and transcending the inter-industries and the intra-industry ones. Its motivity sources from the great productivity progress by the third science and technology revolution. First,this chapter analyzes its realistic foundation from several aspects such as the technology development, the trade liberalization, the investment liberalization and etc. Secondly, it analyzes its motivation by adding the exchange cost variable to its traditional theory with the point of economics. Thirdly, with the New Institutional Economics, it not only studies its production network and analyzes the cause for selecting which network of market, enterprise, or combination, but also discusses the problems appearing in its running process and expresses its institutional motivation.Chapter IV: Analysis on the Intra-product International Specialization Running Mechanism. The formation and progress of the global value chain is the foundation for the intra-product international specialization outspreading. Moreover, its running creates some mechanisms such as the value chain vertical controlling, managing and driving, which ensures the intra-product international specialization running harmoniously. In this chapter, the thesis first analyzes the origins and contents of the global value chain theory and the phenomena for its space vertical fragment and integration. Secondly, it clarifies its dualistic and the trinal motivity mechanism and its dynamic progress. Thirdly, it studies the governance theory for the global value chain including its governor, the non-stability of the specialization status in the value chain and its governing mode. Finally, the thesis discusses the contents, styles and the developing rules for the global value chain innovation. On the basis of it, it further analyzes the connection between the global value chain governing mode and the industry upgrade of the developing countries and provides an method for them to making its industry upgrade under the conditions of the intra-product international specialization.Chapter V: Analysis on the Effects of the Intra-product International Specialization. The intra-product international specialization not only provides a channel for the developed countries to make its global resource configuration, making the developing countries join the global production system and share the new developing opportunity, but also has tremendous influences on the global employment, the profits allocation, the technology shift and the industry shift, taking severe challenge to the global economy development.First, this chapter analyzes its employment effects, including its inner elements, the practical approach for the international specialization employment shift and the different effects of the international industry shift for the employments of the developed and the developing countries. Secondly, it discusses its profit allocation effects. Establishing its profit allocation model, it studies various market structures how to affect their profit in different specialization phase and makes a case study on notebook PC industry. Thirdly, its studies its technology progress effects with the analysis of the knowledge diffusion within the global production network and its effects of technology spillover. Finally, analyzes its effects of international industry shift. The international shift of industry has close connection with its international specification. On the conditions of the intra-product international specialization, the international industry shift changes greatly and evolves a new mode of industry fragment shift. Chapter VI: Industry Upgrade under the Conditions of the Intra-product International Specialization for China. First, it analyzes the actuality and the status for China participating in the intra-product international specialization. Secondly, establishing several measure models with Chinese datum, it makes some evidence-based analysis on its industry structure effects, employment effects and technology upgrading effects respectively. Thirdly, it analyzes the industry development situation of China and the effects for Chinese industries under the conditions of intra-product international specialization. Finally, it makes some politic suggestions for China on how to accelerate the industry upgrade in the intra-product international specialization network.Chapter VII: Conclusion and Prospect. Depending on the analysis in the above ones, it makes some primary conclusions and points out the future research orientation in this chapter.