COMPARATIVE PERFORMANCE OF GLOBAL SEMICONDUCTOR COMPANIES

This paper presents a performance evaluation for the global semiconduc tor industry. The evaluation is conducted via a series of comparative analyses based upon company-level variables. It includes the compariso ns of market share and economic growth, employment and labor productiv ity, cost efficiency measured by the DEA approach, profit margin, R&D expenditure ratio, and growth trend of company's market value. The pap er shows that US, Japanese, and emerging South Korean and Taiwanese se miconductor companies have become the major competitors in the global semiconductor industry. These companies hold different comparative str engths in terms of the multiple evaluation criteria employed in this p aper. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.