产品周期中的国际投资和国际贸易【外文翻译】.doc

1、外文翻译 原文 International Investment and International Trade in the Product Cycle Material Source: The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 80, No.2(may,1966) Author: Raymond Vernon As the demand for a product expands, a certain degree of standardization usually takes place. This is not to say that effo

2、rts at product differentiation-come to an end. On the contrary; such efforts may even intensify, as competitors try to avoid the full brunt of price competition. Moreover, variety may appear as a result of specialization. Radios, for instance, ultimately acquired such specialized forms as clock radi

3、os, automobile radios, portable radios, and so on. Nevertheless, though the subcategories may multiply and the efforts at product differentiation increase, a growing acceptance of certain general standards seems to be typical. Once again, the change has lavational implications. First of all, the nee

4、d for flexibility declines. A commitment to some set of product standards opens up technical possibilities for achieving economies of scale through mass output, and encourages long-term commitments to some given process and some fixed set of facilities. Second, concern about production cost begins t

5、o take the place of concern about product characteristics. Even if increased price competition is not yet present, the reduction of the uncertainties surrounding the operation enhances the usefulness of cost projections and increases the attention devoted to cost. The empirical studies to which I re

6、ferred earlier suggest that, at this stage in an industrys development, there is likely to be considerable shift in the location of production facilities at least as far as internal United States locations are concerned. The empirical materials on international lavational shifts simply have not yet

7、been analyzed sufficiently to tell us very much. A little speculation, however, indicates some hypotheses worth testing. Picture an industry engaged in the manufacture of the high income or labor-saving products that are the focus of our discussion. Assume that the industry has begun to settle down

8、in the United States to some degree of large-scale production. Although the first mass market may be located in the United States, some demand for the product begins almost at once to appear elsewhere. For instance, although heavy fork-lift trucks in general may have a comparatively small market in

9、Spain because of the relative cheapness of unskilled labor in that country, some limited demand for the product will appear there almost as soon as the existence of the product is known. If the product has a high income elasticity of demand or if it is a satisfactory substitute for high-cost labor,

10、the demand in time will begin to grow quite rapidly in relatively advanced countries such as those of Western Europe. Once the market expands in such an advanced country, entrepreneurs will begin to ask themselves whether the time has come to take the risk of setting up a local producing facility. H

11、ow long does it take to reach this stage? An adequate answer must surely be a complex one. Producers located in the United States, weighing the wisdom of setting up a new production facility in the importing country, will feel obliged to balance a number of complex considerations. As long as the mar

12、ginal production cost plus the transport cost of the goods exported from the United States is lower than the average cost of prospective production in the market of import. United States producers will presumably prefer to avoid an investment. But that calculation depends on the producers ability to

13、 project the cost of production in a market in which factor costs and the appropriate technology differ from those at home. Now and again, the lavational force which determined some particular overseas investment is so simple and so powerful that one has little difficulty in identifying it. Otis Ele

14、vators early proliferation of production facilities abroad was quite patently a function of the high cost of shipping assembled elevator cabins to distant locations and the limited scale advantages involved in manufacturing elevator cabins at a single location. Singers decision to invest in Scotland

15、 as early as 1867 was also based on considerations of a sort sympathetic with our hypothesis. It is not unlikely that the overseas demand for its highly standardized product was already sufficiently large at that tinge to exhaust the obvious scale advantages of manufacturing in a single location, es

16、pecially if that location was one of high labor cost. In an area as complex and “imperfect“ as international trade and investment, however, one ought not to anticipate that any hypothesis will have more than a limited explanatory power. United States airplane manufacturers surely respond to many “no

17、neconomic“ lavational forces, such as the desire to play safe in problems of military security. Producers in the United States who have a protected patent position overseas presumably take that fact into account in deciding whether or when to produce abroad. And other producers often are motivated b

18、y considerations too complex to reconstruct readily, such as the fortuitous timing of a threat of new competition in the country of import, the level of tariff protection anticipated for the future, the political situation in the country of prospective investment and so on. We arrive, then, at the s

19、tage at which United States producers have come around to the establishment of production units in the advanced countries. Now a new group of forces are set in train. In an idealized form. Figure I suggest what may be anticipated next. As far as individual United States producers are concerned, the

20、local markets thenceforth will be filled from local production units set up abroad. Once these facilities are in operation, however, more ambitious possibilities for their use may be suggested. When comparing a United States producing facility and a facility in another advanced country, the obvious

21、production-cost differences between the rival producing areas are usually differences due to scale and differences due to labor costs. If the producer is an international firm with producing locations in several countries, its costs of financing capital at the different locations may not be sufficie

22、ntly different to matter very much. If economies of scale are being fully exploited, the principal differences between any two locations are likely to be labor costs. Accordingly, it may prove wise for the international firm to begin servicing third-country markets from the new location. And if labo

23、r cost differences are large enough to offset transport costs, then exports back to the United States may become a possibility as well. Any hypotheses based on the assumption that the United States entrepreneur will react rationally when offered the possibility of a lower-cost location abroad is, of

24、 course, somewhat suspect. The decision-making sequence that is used in connection with international investments, according to various empirical studies, is not a model of the rational process. But there is one theme that emerges again and again in such studies. Any threat to the established positi

25、on of an enterprise is a powerful galvanizing force to action; in fact, if I interpret the empirical work correctly, threat in general is a more reliable stimulus to action than opportunity is likely to be. In the international investment field, threats appear in various forms once a large-scale exp

26、ort business in manufactured products has developed. Local entrepreneurs located in the countries which are the targets of these exports grow restive at the opportunities they are missing. Local governments concerned with generating employment or promoting growth or balancing their trade accounts be

27、gin thinking of ways and means to replace the imports. An international investment by the exporter, therefore, becomes a prudent means of forestalling the loss of a market. In this case, the yield on the investment is seen largely as the avoidance of a loss of income to the system. The notion that a

28、 threat to the status quo is a powerful galvanizing force for international investment also seems to explain what happens after the initial investment. Once such an investment is made by a United States producer, other major producers in the United States sometimes see it as a threat to the status q

29、uo. They see themselves as losing position relative to the investing company, with vague intimations of further losses to come. Their “share of the market“ is imperiled, viewing “share of the market“ in global terms. At the same time, their ability to estimate the production cost structure of their

30、competitors, operating far away in an unfamiliar foreign area, is impaired; this is a particularly unsettling state because it conjures up the possibility of a return flow of products to the United States and a new source of price competition, based on cost differences of unknown magnitude. The unce

31、rtainty can be reduced by emulating the path finding investor and by investing in the same area; this may not be an optimizing investment pattern and it may be costly, but it is least disturbing to the status quo. Pieces of this hypothetical pattern are subject to empirical tests of a sort. So far,

32、at any rate, the empirical tests have been reassuring. The office machinery industry, for instance, has seen repeatedly the phenomenon of the introduction of a new product in the United States, followed by United States exports, followed still later by United States imports. (We have still to test w

33、hether the timing of the commencement of overseas production why United States subsidiaries fits into the expected pattern.) In the electrical and electronic products industry, those elements in the pattern which can be measured show up nicely. A broader effort is now under way to test the United St

34、ates trade patterns of a group of products with high income elastic ties; and, here too, the preliminary results are encouraging. On a much more general basis, it is reassuring for our hypotheses to observe that the foreign manufacturing subsidiaries of United States firms have been increasing their

35、 exports to third countries. It will have occurred to the reader by now that the pattern envisaged here also may shed some light on the Leontief paradox. Leontief, it will be recalled, seemed to confound comparative cost theory by establishing the fact that the ratio of capital to labor in United St

36、ates exports was lower, not higher, than the like ratio in the United States production which had been displaced by competitive imports. The hypothesis suggested in this paper would have the United States exporting high-income and labor-saving products in the early stages of their existence, and imp

37、orting them later on.* In the early stages, the value-added contribution of industries engaged in producing these items probably contains an unusually high proportion of labor cost. This is not so much because the labor is particularly skilled, as is so often suggested. More likely, it is due to a q

38、uite different phenomenon. At this stage, the standardization of the manufacturing process has not gotten very far; that is to come later, when the volume of output is high enough and the degree of uncertainty low enough to justify investment in relatively inflexible, capital-intensive facilities. A

39、s a result, the production process relies relatively heavily on labor inputs at a time when the United States commands an export position; and the process relies more heavily on capital at a time when imports become important. This, of course, is a hypothesis which has not yet been subjected to any

40、really rigorous test. But it does open up a line of inquiry into the structure of United States trade which is well worth pursuing. 译文 产品周期中的国际投资和国际贸易 资料来源：经济学季刊 作者：雷蒙德维农 对一个产品的需求扩大，一定程度的标准化经常发生。这并不是说 ， 它作用于产品差异上 产品的研发到结束。相反的，这样的努力 ， 甚至可能加大 ，作为竞争对手试图避免充分的冲击的价格竞争力。此外 ， 品种可能看起来是一个专业化的结果。收音机 ， 比如，最终获得了

41、这样专门的形式为时钟收音机、汽车收音机、便携式收音机、等等。不过 ,虽然子分类可以相乘，有效产品差异化的增加 ,越来越多的人认同的某些一般标准似乎是典型的。 再次 ， 变化有区位 影响。首先 ， 灵活性的需求有所下降。一个承诺一些套产品标准的技术可能性开放实现规模经济 ， 通过大众产出 ， 并鼓励长期的承诺 ，一定的工艺方法和部分固定设施。第二 ,关注生产成本开始代替关注产品的特征。 即使增加价格竞争是没有礼物 ,降低操作提高的不明朗的实用性 ， 并增加了成本预测的注意力致力于成本。 我早期参考的实验研究表示 ， 在这个阶段在一个行业的发展 ， 极有可能有相当大的转变生产设施的位置上至少至于内

42、部美国的位置有关。 实证材料在国际区位变化分析了简单的未被充分地告诉我们甚多。然而 ,一个小的猜测表明一些假设值得测试。 描述一 个行业从事制造的高收入或节省劳力的产品 ， 我们讨论的是关注的焦点。 假定该行业已经开始定居在美国到某种程度的大规模生产。虽然的第一次大规模市场可能位于美国 ， 一些产品的需求几乎同时出现在其他地方。例如 ，尽管重型叉车一般比较小 ， 因为在西班牙市场的非熟练劳动力相对便宜 ， 几乎已知产品一存在，这些产品的有限需求就会出现在那里。 如果该产品具有高收入的需求弹性 ， 如果它是一个令人满意的替代成本的需求 ， 在劳动时间将开始增长相当迅速地在较先进的国家 ， 例如那

43、些西欧。一旦市场扩大在这样一种先进的国家 ， 企业家将开始问自己是否时间已经到 了去冒这个险设立了一家当地的生产设备。 要花多久的时间到达这个阶段吗 ？ 一个满意的回答肯定是一个复杂的人。位于美国生产商的智慧 ,称重成立一个新的生产设备的进口国家 ,都会感到不得不平衡许多复杂的因素。只要边际生产成本加上出口的货物运输费用从美国低于预期的平均成本生产的市场上进口。美国生产商可能会更愿意避免一种投资。但这取决于生产者的计算能力 ， 在项目的生产成本是指在一个市场中 ， 生产要素成本和适当的技术不同于那些在家里。 再次，一些区位的力量，特别是海外投资的决定是如此简单，如此强大，以至于任何一方在确定它

44、并不困难 。奥蒂斯电梯公司的生产设施早期增殖国外是很明显的航运组装电梯小屋到远的地方和有限的规模生产电梯车厢涉及在一个单一的区位优势，成本高的功能。辛格的决定在苏格兰投资早作为 1867 年的基础上也与我们的假设排序同情的考虑。这不是不可能，其高度标准化的产品在海外的需求已经在该色彩用尽一个位置，制造业规模优势明显，特别是如果该位置是一个高劳动成本足够大的位置。 在一个复杂和 “ 不完美 “ 作为国际贸易和投资，但是，不应该预期，比任何假设将有限的解释权力。美国各国飞机制造商肯定回应许多 “ 非经济 ” 势力，如发挥的愿望，在军事安全问 题的安全。在美国生产者谁拥有专利保护的立场考虑海外大概在

45、决定是否或何时产生国外的事实。和其他生产者往往是考虑因素过于复杂，重建容易，如在一个进口国新的竞争威胁偶然的时机，动机，关税保护水平对未来的预期，在未来的投资国的政治局势等等。 我们到达时，然后，在会上美国生产者回头，在先进国家的生产经营单位建立阶段。现在，一个新的集团的力量设置在列车。在一个理想化的形式。图我建议什么可以预见未来。 至于有关美国生产商而言，当地市场此后将充 满本地产品在国外设立的单位。一旦这些设施在操作，但是，对于它们的使用更加雄心勃勃的可能性可建议。在比较先进的国家，一个在另一个美国生产设备和设施，明显的生产成本生产领域的竞争对手之间的差异通常是由于规模的差异和分歧，由于劳

46、动力成本。如果生产者是一个在多个国家生产地点的国际公司，融资资本成本在不同的地点可能不够非常不同的事情。如果规模经济得到充分利用，任何两个地点之间的主要分歧有可能是劳动成本。因此，它可能会证明明智的国际公司，开始新的位置服务从第三国市场。如果劳动力成本的差异大到足以抵消运输成本，然后出口到 美国后，以及可能成为一种可能。 任何基于的假设推断，美国的企业家会有什么反应时，提供合理的成本较低的位置可能在国外，当然，有些怀疑。决策序列，用于与国际投资方面，根据不同的实证研究，是不是一个理性的过程模型。但有一个主题，一次又一次地出现在此类研究。任何一个企业的既定立场的威胁是一个强大的镀锌强迫行动，事实

47、上，如果我理解正确工作的经验，在一般的威胁是一个更可靠的刺激作用大于机会可能。 在国际投资领域，以各种形式出现的威胁一次在制造产品的大型出口业务发展。在国家都有这些出口的目标位于动荡不安的当地企业家成长的 机会，他们在缺少。与创造就业机会和促进经济增长和平衡的贸易账户有关地方政府开始思考的方式和方法，以取代进口。一个由出口国际投资，因此，成为防范市场损失的一个审慎的方法。在这种情况下，对投资收益率在很大程度上被认为是作为一个系统的收入，以避免损失。 对现状的威胁是一个强大的镀锌国际投资力量似乎也解释首次投资完成后发生的观点。一旦这种投资是由美国生产商提出，在美国其他主要制作人有时认为这是一个对

48、现状的威胁。他们认为，失去位置相对于投资公司与模糊的暗示进一步亏损来，自己。他们的 “ 市场占有率 ” ，是危害，观看在全球范 围内的市场份额。与此同时，他们有能力来估计他们的竞争对手的生产成本结构，经营远在一个陌生的外国地区，是受损，这是一个特别令人不安的状态，因为它让人想起了一个产品回流美国的可能性各国和价格竞争的新来源，基于未知的费用数额的差异。可以减少这种不确定性通过模拟寻路的投资者，在同一地区的投资，这可能不是一个优化投资结构，它可能是昂贵的，但它是最令人不安的现状。 这个假设块模式受到实证检验的一个种类。 到目前为止，无论如何，实证试验已让人放心。该办事处机械行业，例如，有多次看到

49、了一个在美国由美国出口之后，新产品引进的现 象，其次再后来由美国进口。 （我们仍然要测试是否开始在海外生产的时机，为什么美国子公司适合到期望的模式。）在电器及电子制品业，在这可以很好地显示测量模式的元素。一个更广泛的努力，目前正在进行测试美国的一个高收入弹性产品集团贸易格局的关系。以及在此，初步结果是令人鼓舞的一种更具一般性的基础上，这是令人欣慰我们的假说观察认为，美国公司的外汇制造分公司一直在增加其出口到第三国。 它将会发生读者现在，该模式的设想在这里也可以揭示一些关于里昂惕夫的悖论。这将是回顾，似乎混淆通过建立一个事实，即资本对劳动的美国出口比低 不就高，比较成本理论比在美国生产的比率，如已被竞争性进口流离失所。该假说认为，本文将美国出口的高收入和其存在的早期阶段，省力的产品，在早期阶段进口的产品，产业附加值在生产经营的贡献这些项目可能包含的劳动力成本非常高的比例。这与其说是因为劳工是特别熟练，正像人们经常建议。更有可能的是，这是由于一个完全不同的现象。在这个阶段，在生产过程的标准化还没有得到很远，这是今后后来，当输出音量足够大和足够低的不确定性相对缺乏弹性的理由，资本密集型设施投资的力度。因此，生产过程在很大程度上依赖劳动投入相对而此时美国的命令一 出口位置，以及过程依赖于资本更多地在这个时候进口变得很