The NIC Challenge in Advanced Electronics

We concluded in the previous chapter that garments and textiles are showing signs of “de-maturing” with the advent of microelectronics-based production, data-processing, and communications systems. It seems likely that the higher wage NIC producers will experience a squeeze as competition increasingly centers on the race between cheap robots in the West and low-wage workers in poorer nations. The more successful producers may, of course, respond by following the OECD firms into more capital- and knowledge-intensive production. Given the relative scarcity of these factors in the NICs, however, the question of appropriate focus remains open.