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The female reproductive tract has two main functions: protection against microbial challenge and maintenance of pregnancy to term. The upper reproductive tract comprises the fallopian tubes and the uterus, including the endocervix, and the lower tract consists of the ectocervix and the vagina. Immune cells residing in the reproductive tract play contradictory roles: they maintain immunity against vaginal pathogens in the lower tract and establish immune tolerance for sperm and an embryo/fetus in the upper tract. The immune system is significantly influenced by sex steroid hormones, although leukocytes in the reproductive tract lack receptors for estrogen and progesterone. The leukocytes in the reproductive tract are distributed in either an aggregated or a dispersed form in the epithelial layer, lamina propria, and stroma. Even though immune cells are differentially distributed in each organ of the reproductive tract, the predominant immune cells are T cells, macrophages/dendritic cells, natural killer (NK) cells, neutrophils, and mast cells. B cells are rare in the female reproductive tract. NK cells in the endometrium significantly expand in the late secretory phase and further increase their number during early pregnancy. It is evident that NK cells and regulatory T (Treg) cells are extremely important in decidual angiogenesis, trophoblast migration, and immune tolerance during pregnancy. Dysregulation of endometrial/decidual immune cells is strongly related to infertility, miscarriage, and other obstetric complications. Understanding the immune system of the female reproductive tract will significantly contribute to women's health and to success in pregnancy.

A number of well-known studies report that between one-third and two-thirds of international joint ventures eventually break up. While many generalizations, explanations, and prescriptions have been based on these statistics, their meaning is unclear. First, all foreign affiliates are subject to normal business risk, and to the risk that they will be divested by parents for strategic or financial reasons. Are these risks higher for joint ventures than for wholly-owned subsidiaries? Second, joint ventures may be shorter lived not because of their joint venture status, but because affiliates which are joint ventured have other characteristics that make them more likely to exit. To know whether joint ventures are shorter lived, one must control for the other factors that affect the longevity of affiliates, whether wholly-owned or joint ventured. Third, many joint ventures contracts contain clauses that allow partners to sell their stakes to one another at specific intervals. Because they make exit easier, joint ventures should have shorter lives, but these shorter lives should only be due to selloffs, not to liquidations. It is therefore important to see whether the supposedly higher termination rate of joint ventures stakes is due to a higher rate of selloffs or to a higher rate of liquidations. In this paper we (1) compare the longevity of stakes in joint ventures versus those in wholly-owned subsidiaries (2) while controlling for other factors that affect the longevity of such stakes and (3) while distinguishing between two types of exit, those through sale and those through liquidation. While past authors have addressed these three issues in piecemeal fashion, we believe we are the first to address them simultaneously. We analyze the factors that affect the longevity of 355 Japanese stakes in U.S. manufacturing affiliates. Controlling for all the factors that affect exit rates, we find that Japanese parents are more likely to terminate their stakes in U.S. joint ventures than in wholly-owned subsidiaries. This higher termination rate of joint venture stakes is explained by a higher probability of selling them, but not of liquidating them. Most of the other factors that have been found significant in explaining gross divestment of foreign affiliates do in fact only affect exits through sales, but not exits through liquidations. Hence it is true that joint ventures have shorter lives, but dangerous to interpret this finding as necessarily meaning that they are more likely to “fail”.

The effects of strategic order of entry on firms' performance have long been an issue in many areas of study. Past research efforts, however, have been concentrated mostly on first mover or early entrant advantages. To contribute to developing a theory of latecomer strategies, the authors investigate how latecomers compete successfully or even leapfrog early movers. They review previous studies on early mover advantages and disadvantages, and group the sources of such advantages or disadvantages into three areas: the firm, its market, and its competitors. The theoretical focus is how a firm converts the opportunities stemming from entry order into performance. The authors seek to confirm and extend relevant theories by examining how late entrants have caught up with incumbent industry leaders in the global semiconductor industry. On the basis of in-depth case analysis of three Japanese and three Korean semiconductor companies, they identify and categorize successful latecomer strategies into two types: strategies for overcoming latecomer disadvantages and strategies for utilizing latecomer advantages. Focusing, thin margin or loss bearing, and volume building form the essence of strategies for overcoming disadvantages, whereas odd timing, time compression, human-embodied technology transfer, benchmarking, technological leapfrogging, and resource leveraging form the essence of strategies for utilizing advantages. Because many companies in Asia have had to face the reality of being latecomers, the Asian perspectives are particularly useful for studying and explicating latecomer strategies.

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