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Contents Introduction

This paper presents basic firm level statistics on Japanese and US firms in the semiconductor industry in the attempt to capture the stylized facts, if any, that exist in the data. While the data spans from 1980 until 1997, particular attention will be drawn to the period of the Semiconductor Trade Agreement (1987-1996) to search for anomalies that might exist due to the imposition of a market share policy. Prior to examining the data, some historical background and theoretical predictions are outlined. This is an exploratory work, which hopes to lead to a more rigorous testing of theory by means of econometric work at some later date. Comments and suggestions are welcome.