Has Globalisation Affected Collective Bargaining? An Empirical Test, 1980–2009

We investigate whether globalisation has affected the nature of collective bargaining in OECD and emerging countries. The main innovations over the existing empirical literature are (i) the consideration of three distinct aspects of collective bargaining (union density, decentralised bargaining and the extent of government intervention), (ii) the reliance on a sample with a larger cross‐sectional and time dimension (44 countries from 1980 to 2009), and (iii) the application of a more appropriate empirical methodology (dynamic panel data models). We find that globalisation, on average, depresses unionisation but neither affects the degree of decentralisation nor government intervention in collective bargaining. We also uncover significant heterogeneity effects, both across countries and over time.     

How Has Kodak Held 63.1 Percent of the Market Share in China?

Though at the end of last Marchwhen Ye Ying, vice president of KodakCorp (Asia and Pacific) and generalmanager of public relations department,said that nobody knows Kodak's exactmarket share in China, the Survey andConsultant Center of the CCTV announced a few days ago an exciting figure for the corporation.The corporation's market share inChina has hit a new historical record,attaining a market share of 63.1 percentof film products.According to a survey of consumersin major cities in 20…     

Is Globalisation in Danger?

This paper compares the globalisation experience of the late 19^th century with that of the post world war period. It notes the enormous changes in the world economy arising from the increasing participation of the developing countries in the world goods, labour and capital markets and the reduction in the cost of communications that has underlined these changes. More importantly globalisation was made by a consensus on trade, debt and macroeconomics which has led to policy reforms in developing countries including China whose entry into the WTO provides a high watermark in globalisation of the latter period. The paper notes that globalisation is not in danger of reversal given that the forces that led to this outcome in the earlier period have become weak. Ideas, interests, international relations and stability achieved in the post World War period gives ground for qualified optimism about the continuation of globalisation.     

How Do You Consume in China?

On the topic of Chinese consumption style,China's Foreign Trade held a gossip salon to listen to the truest voices from common Chinese residences living in different backgrounds and cities,also foreign expats in China.     

How Has Haier Prepared for Internationalization?

OnSetember17,the99GlobalMarketProductExpositionsponsoredbytheHaierGroupwasheldinQingdao.Over2,000distributors,suppliers,academicspecialistsandgovernmentofficialsfrommorethan60countriesandregionsattendedtheconference.TheexpositiondisplayedHaier's22categories,102seriesand563newproducts,including131kindsofnewtechnology.Inaninterviewwithreporters,MaZhangRuimin,chairmanoftheboardofdirectorsandpresidentoftheHaierGroup,showedafirmconfidencetowardstheinternationalizationoftheHaierGroup.R6port…     

Merger Review: How Much of Industry is Affected in an International Perspective?

The paper develops a methodological framework for quantifying the impact of merger control regulations. While most countries have different criteria in terms of sales, market shares or combinations of the above, and while listing an inventory of these criteria is easy, such an exercise does not provide an answer regarding their impact on the market for corporate control. A methodology is developed to compare empirically the percentage of firms affected in an industry in a country by the “clearing in advance” regulation. By comparing industries and countries, we are able to provide an indication of the impact of merger regulations for a large number of industries in Europe. As such we provide a first indication of the tightness of ex ante merger review. The usual disclaimer applies.     

How Robust is the Kearney/Foreign Policy Globalisation Index?

We argue that the Kearney/Foreign Policy (KFP) index of globalisation is constructed by making some problematic assumptions about the measurement, normalisation and weighting of the variables included in the index. We propose alternative measurement, normalisation and weighting rules, and using these rules, recalculate the ranking of the fifty countries, using the original KFP data. Specifically, we use, in various combinations: (i) variables ‘adjusted’ for geographical characteristics of countries; (ii) statistically optimal weights obtained by principal components analysis; (iii) a normalisation rule that treats different years of observations separately. We find that the country rankings change significantly when adjusted variables are used, indicating that the original KFP index is partially measuring geographical differences between countries.     

Does and How Does Globalisation Matter at the Industry Level?

In this paper we develop a concept of globalisation at the micro level defined as the exposure of a productivity follower industry in one country to the productivity leader in another country. Globalisation is measured by the intensity of contacts through trade and foreign direct investment. In a simple model and empirically we show that the exposure of a productivity follower to competition with the leader is highly correlated with the productivity gap of this industry. Competition restricted to one region such as Europe, or North America, or the Far East, is not sufficient to achieve highest productivity levels. Moreover, it turns out that foreign direct investment (FDI) has a weight in the globalisation index at least equal to trade. FDI can contribute directly to higher levels of domestic productivity by transferring the best production practices, and put pressure on other domestic producers to improve. The impact of trade on globalisation can be weakened by tariffs and non‐tariffs.     

Inflation Risk?

Intereconomics - Inflation is on the rise again in the industrialised world. This has led to fears of a sustained surge in inflation. This article argues that while such fears may make sense in the...     

Business Cycles Synchronicity and Income Levels: Has Globalisation Brought us Closer Than Ever?

Research on business cycle linkages shows a tendency to model countries of relatively the same income levels jointly. However, the issue of whether these countries move along the same business cycles has not been formally investigated in the literature. In this paper, we take this approach and investigate whether each group of countries follows its own dynamics and is therefore subjected to the same business cycle and whether these cycles are independent of each other across income groups. Results indicate that high income per capita countries (HICs) tend to be guided by stronger similarity in business cycles than countries in the middle (MICs) and low income (LICs) groups. In search for an explanation of the business cycles synchronicity observed, panel data analysis was explored. The results from the robust fixed effects estimation show neither trade openness nor shocks to consumption underlie international business cycle synchronization, but rather shocks to oil prices.     

How to Establish a Wholly Foreign Owned Enterprise in China?

Wholly foreign owned enter prises are permitted to regis ter in cases where at least half of their annual output is exported or if the nature of their operations relies heavily on advanced technology and the application of this high technology is beneficial to China. Approval to establish a wholly foreign owned enterprise is granted much more sparingly when compared to joint ventures.     

How to Build First-Class CBD in China

CBD is the facilities perfect gold areas, and the symbolic area of many international metropolises in the world,so it can be called “special zone in the city”.     

Where Will China＇s Inflation Go in H2 2011？

According to the data released by National Bureau of Statistics（NBS） on July 13, China＇s consumer price index （CPI）, the main gauge of inflation, rose 5.4 percent year-on-year in the firs（half of this ...     

Can a Higher Inflation Target Reduce Inflation Volatility?

This paper investigates the relationship between inflation and inflation volatility. Using monthly data from 1913 to 2013, the results show that U.S. inflation and its volatility have been positively correlated when inflation exceeds a certain value, but negatively correlated when inflation is below this threshold. The evidence also suggests that inflation volatility is minimized between annual inflation rates of 1 and 3.6%, which includes both the 2% inflation target of many central banks, and the 3.5% break point predicted by the New Keynesian model of Coibion et al. ( 2012 ), but not the 4% inflation target recommended by Ball ( 2013 ) and Krugman ( 2013 ).     

Syria Capital Has A China Town

Syria's first China Town is situated in Addla Free Zone, Damascus. It is sanctioned by Syrian Ministry of Economy, recognized by China Embassy in Syria and supported by the Syria Government departments. Nowadays, China Town (first phase project) covers 10000 sq. meters, where contains 100-more independent shops, storages and rel-     

How Many People are Using Credit Cards in China

CreditCardscomeintoChinesecivilians'daiIylivesinaquickstep.TheSocialSurveyInstitutionofChina(SSIC)madeaninvestigationinBeijing,Shanghai,Nanjing,Wuhan,ChangshaandGuangzhourecently,andobtained1678effectivespecimens.Theinvestigationrevealedthat42.3%individualsheldcreditcards,and17%ofthemhadmorethantwodifferentcardsinhand.Amongthecreditcardholders,reasonsofapplyingforcreditcardsvariedfromonecardholdertoanother.9%peopleappliedforcreditcardsforthesakeoffollowingthefashion;15%peoplewantedtocha…