Costs and Productivity in Automobile Production: The Challenge of Japanese Efficiency

by Melvyn A. Fuss, Leonard Waverman

Overview

Motor vehicles are prominent among the flows of exports and/or imports for Canada, Germany, Japan, and the United States, and these trade flows are heavily influenced by the basic relative competitiveness of the production processes for automotive manufacturing. In this book the authors analyze the factors that contributed to the comparative cost competitiviness of the four countries' auto industries over the period 1961-1984 and disentangle the factors contributing to the Japanese cost and efficiency advantages. The authors provide estimates of comparative costs of automobile production (both short-run and long-run) and the sources of these cost differences, based on the econometric cost function methodology. An innovation is the careful treatment of capacity utilization, one of the most important sources of short-run cost and efficiency differences. This methodology is also used effectively in an analysis of the Canada-U.S. Auto Pact, a unique experiment in trade liberalization. Previous estimates of cost and efficiency differences using the plant inspection and comparison of company financial reports methodologies are also evaluated.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521341417
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	04/24/1992
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.22(w) x 9.37(h) x 0.83(d)

Table of Contents

Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. International differences in output, productivity and wages in the automobile industry: the 1950s to the mid-1980s; 3. The cost-function approach to the analysis of cost and total factor productivity differences; 4. Data base sources and method of construction; 5. Empirical results: estimation of the cost function; 6. Productivity growth in the automobile industry, 1970–84: a comparison of the United States, Japan, Germany and Canada; 7. International comparisons of automobile industry cost and productivity levels: Japan, Germany and the United States; 8. International comparisons of automobile industry cost and productivity levels: Canadian with US, Japanese and German production; 9. Summary and conclusions; References; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"...useful to readers who want a good and in-depth understanding of the industry in these countries." Kar-Yiu Wong, Journal of Japanese Studies

From the Publisher