Introduction

The most important features of the evolution of comparative advantage in the machine tool (henceforth MT) industry since World War II have been the decline of the U.S. industry and the rise of the Japanese to the status of leading producing and exporting country. The U.S. industry lost the rank of largest producer that it held since the manufacture of MTs became a specialized business activity in the second half of the nineteenth century. After becoming a net importer of MTs for the first time in 1978 (Fig. 5.1), the U.S. has become dependent on imports for more than 50% of its MT consumption. The counterpart to the decline of the U.S. industry is the growth of the Japanese industry. A small and technologically backward sector until the 1950s, the Japanese industry became the largest producer and exporter during the 1980s (Tables 5.1 and 5.2).

The convergence among industrialized countries during the second postwar period explains only in part the international differences in sectoral growth rates. Instead, the evolution of comparative advantage has been driven fundamentally by the international differences in innovative performance in the development and diffusion of numerical control (NC) technology (Table 5.3). Whereas innovation has been a prominent factor in the activities of MT firms throughout the industry history, its consequences on the pattern of national comparative advantage have been quite limited with the important exception of the sequence of innovations in MT designs by American builders during the second half of the nineteenth century.