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Contents Introduction

In Japan, Korea, and China, many large steel firms aggressively restructured their operations in the last decade. This restructuring was far-reaching with some firms being liquidated, others merging, and strategic alliances being strengthened. Partially as a result of this restructuring, employment in steel firms began to fall rapidly after the early-1990s. The Asian financial crisis also had an especially large impact on Korean firms as domestic demand contracted sharply in 1997 and 1998. There was a surge in exports from these three economies and Taiwan in the late 1990s, and the United States charged numerous steel producers in Northeast Asia and other regions of the world with dumping. This charge was not made in the early-mid 1990s, but this firm-level analysis reveals few differences in firm performance between these periods that would substantiate such charges. Moreover, even after the export surge, Northeast Asia’s large firms sold most of their output in local markets and the vast majority of their exports went to other Asian countries, not to North America or Europe. However, the recent mergers and proliferation of strategic alliances among the regions largest steel makers raises potentially important anti-trust questions in addition to providing an interesting case study of industry adjustment.