Television system-on-a-chip (TV SoC) is a highly integrated IC chip that controls a wide range of the key functions needed by TV systems. The development of TV SoCs requires both component knowledge and extensive system knowledge. This paper investigates the rise of two Taiwanese IC design firms—MediaTek and MStar (acquired by MediaTek in 2014)—that are dominant vendors of TV SoCs. In particular, it examines the mechanisms by which these firms acquired the componentand system-level knowledge to succeed. First, I discuss the product modularization process that took place in the TV industry with the advent of flat-panel digital TVs in the early half of the 2000s. I argue that this process resulted in encapsulation of system functions into an SoC. Second, I investigate the early phase of MediaTek and MStar becoming TV SoC vendors. I identify five major channels through which the two firms acquired component knowledge. Then, I illustrate the process by which these vendors acquired system knowledge through interactions with customers while helping them solve technological and economic problems. Finally, I focus on the more recent period, during which the firms came to dominate the TV SoC market. I show the mechanism of knowledge flow from major TV assemblers to Taiwanese vendors that helped the latter consolidate their powerful positions in the market.

Although often seen as a path to prosperity, natural resources, especially oil, are associated with slow economic growth, authoritarianism, and civil war. Pathologies caused by natural resources are collectively referred to as the “resource curse,” and numerous scholarly works have been published on this subject over the past 20 years. This article reviews the political regime branch of the resource curse literature, classifying existing research into three categories. First, early studies found a negative relationship between oil and democracy. However, recent research casts serious doubt on this, arguing that there is no significant correlation between oil and political regimes or that the effects of oil are conditional on other factors, which respectively constitute the second and third categories of the resource curse literature. Notably, newer studies tend to qualify the original theory of the resource curse in some way, either spatially (i.e., arguing that the theory applies to only specific countries) or temporally (i.e., arguing it applies to only a specific time period). These spatial and temporal modifications might appear to be refinements of the theory, but this paper argues that they can also cause problems. Specifically, by focusing on particular countries in a particular time period, researchers can overlook the historical and international factors that led to the resource curse. Based on an extensive survey of the resource curse literature, this review article suggests that scholars can achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the causal relationship between natural resources and political regimes by taking the colonial period and the decolonization proctitess into account and considering the influence of international factors.