Globalization and transformation of human resource management in South Korea

Developments in the area of globalization, labour markets and human resource management (HRM) are topical and have high profiles. Yet they are often underpinned by several older and implicit views. This paper examines five propositions in this respect. We discuss globalization, often taken as driving such developments, and the role of supportive and limiting factors to its influence. We use the case of South Korea, as the main direction of change here is seen as from 'traditional' employment security and seniority-based systems of employee resourcing and rewarding, towards 'newer' flexible and performance-based ones. This seems, on the surface, a case of practice transfer in a somewhat inhospitable climate. We examine and evaluate the restraints, direction and extent of such changes, and arguments that HRM systems are being transformed by such developments. We find that the situation is more constrained and ambiguous.     

What drove 19th century commodity market integration?

This paper seeks to answer the titular question of what drove commodity market integration in the 19th century. Using grain markets during the first wave of globalization as a testing ground, the paper builds on the insights of the contemporary trade literature and the economic history of the 19th century and relates levels of market integration to cross-sectional and temporal variations in transport technology, geography, monetary regimes, commercial networks/policy, and conflict. The results of this decomposition analysis are interesting on two counts: first, they verify the commonality of experience of the 19th and late 20th centuries; second, they suggest a very strong role for the commercial, diplomatic, and monetary environment in which market integration took place.     

世界经济全球化与区域经济一体化

经济全球化能形成趋势的本质就在于能够在全球范围内优化资源配置,提高全人类的福利水平;当前世界经济全球化与区域一体化两趋势同时增强,是各国在全球化进程中降低交易成本的一种理性选择;资源要素的直接流动与整合是世界经济分工与合作的新趋势。     

经济全球化趋势下我国企业信息化建设初探

世界经济全球化，对我国经济发展既是机遇也是挑战。面对当今世界在高科技信息技术方面极具优势的国际竞争对手，我们只有思想上更加重视，技术上勇于创新，人才上加紧培养，才能有效地应对日益激烈的国内外市场竞争的挑战。     

Measuring Global and Regional Trade Integration in Terms of Concentration of Access

I apply concentration measures from the inequality literature—the Lorenz curve and Gini coefficient—to the measurement of global and regional integration, and show that these can be derived from the theoretical gravity model in the presence of unequal costs of access for firms from different locations to aparticular market. Overall, comparing nine economies, I find that the United States is the most globalized on these measures, and India and China are the least globalized. The smaller EU economies, which are very open on standard measures, should probably be viewed as regionalized rather than globalized. JEL no. F10, F15, C49     

全球化视角下的中欧贸易争端及其博弈分析——以纺织品为例

欧盟已经并将继续成为对华贸易摩擦的首要发起国,中欧双方在贸易争端中考虑的第一影响变量就是经济全球化。全球化使贸易争端具有了不可避免性和可协调性,并为其提供了动态变化机制,进而使其成为一场欧盟占主动的完全信息动态博弈。近期的纺织品贸易磨擦就是一个明证,我国在博弈中只能也必须积极应对,并力争促成由被动向主动地位的转变,即我国在短期内要尽快建立成熟的争端应对机制,长期则要逐步促成比较优势的全球实现和动态升级。     

Offshore production and skill upgrading by Japanese manufacturing firms

We investigate the influence of offshore production by Japanese multinationals on domestic skill intensity. Identifying relationships based on within variation in a panel of 1070 firms, we find that additional foreign affiliate employment in low-income countries raises skill intensity. The positive effect of FDI on domestic skill intensity, however, diminishes as investment shifts towards high-income countries. Increases in affiliate employment in low-income countries also raise a firm’s reliance on finished goods purchases, suggesting that overseas employment affects domestic skill intensity because imports of final goods from foreign affiliates displace domestic production.     

原产地规则与中美贸易差额

随着中国对美贸易顺差的持续增长,外贸平衡已逐步演变成影响两国双边经贸关系乃至政治关系的突出问题。造成这种局面的原因是多方面的,本文主要从经济全球化条件出发,探讨在当前形势下原产地规则作为统计两国双边贸易的一个基本指标存在的问题与缺陷,以及由此对中美贸易差额统计造成的影响。     

European integration: the third step

A perception of declining EU competitiveness has intensified calls for structural reforms within the EU. This paper examines recent evidence on changes in relative EU competitiveness and considers the observed changes in relation to the evolving competitive environment facing EU firms. Our analysis suggests that recent declines in EU competitiveness reflect changes (or lack thereof) within the EU in response to an evolutionary “Third Step” in the process of EU integration: global market integration. Starting from the mid-1990s, we find that the EU began to face unprecedented increases in external sources of competition. The rising competition from external sources and declining export market competitiveness created pressures for EU firms to alter their organizational and product market strategies to meet the challenge of a globally integrating market. While many leading EU firms have responded to this challenge, most EU firms remain hampered by anachronistic EU product and labor market regulations that have inhibited adjustments that could better restore the competitiveness of EU based firms. In particular, our analysis points to labor market rigidities and limited growth in the services sector as factors limiting adjustment to the realities of a global market. The growing calls for structural reforms therefore reflect the rising external competitive pressures on EU firms as they attempt to respond to growing global competition.

Post-Soviet Russian Film and the Trauma of Globalization

In this paper the author discusses how in post-Soviet times, after years of communal property and existence, Russia has reacted and adjusted itself toward the global expansion of Western capital with all the consequences of that process. The analysis focuses on three films, Mikhalkov’s The Barber of Siberia (1999), Fruntov’s All That of Which We’ve Dreamed So Long (1997), and Balabanov’s Of Freaks and Men (1998), which in different, very desperate ways illustrate Russia’s economic and cultural ambivalence towards Western economic and cultural growth. The paper pursues the cultural manifestations of the cost of a psychological crisis exacted at the level of both society and the individual.