This paper empirically investigates high-tech firms’ decisions to relocate manufacturing plants to low-cost countries. Computers and electronics have undergone sector-wide offshoring and typically feature an oligopolistic market structure, in which firms’ profits depend on their...

This paper uncovers a novel pattern of offshoring dynamics in a high-tech industry, and proposes a structural model to explain it. Specifically, the hard disk drive industry (1976-98) witnessed massive waves of entry, exit, and the relocation of manufacturing plants to low-cost countries, in...