Panel data analysis is applied to identify the factors that determine competitive advantage in the worldwide
semiconductor industry. We follow Porter (1985), Hunt (2002), and Priem and Butler (2001) in defining
competitively advantaged firms as those whose financial performance (ROIC in our case) is superior to the industry
average. To examine the moderating effect of business cycle on the influences of the resource configuration on
ROIC, we introduced the book-to-bill ratio for Semiconductor Equipment Manufacturers headquartered in North
America (BBR) as a dummy variable D (0= BBR≥1; 1= BBR