GOVERNMENT STRUCTURAL POLICIES AND THE AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY

Structural policy has two elements: rules of competition and concentration in the marketplace, and deliberate attempts to structure industrial sectors. Historically, Europe, Japan, and the U.S. have pursued quite dissimilar structural policies, reflecting their differing perceptions of the national interest, different international imperatives, and different conceptions of the role of the state. The automobile industry offers sharp cross-country comparisons of structural policy at i t s most vigorous. In this paper, the successes and failures of U.S. antitrust activity toward the automobile industry are considered in comparison to the relative absence of such policies abroad. Similarly, governments' attempts to develop internationally competitive automobile industries in Europe and Japan contrast with the domestic regulatory orientation in the U.S. This historical analysis suggests the current need for reorientations in national structural policies in order to deal effectively with internationalized markets, firms, and competition in the automobile and other industries today.