Hyperpower Exceptionalism: Globalisation the American Way

We are in a unique position because of our unique assets, because of the character of our people, the strength of our ideals, the might of our military and the enormous economy that supports it. (Vice-President Dick Cheney, addressing the Council on Foreign Relations, February 2002) Today's era is dominated by American power, American culture, the American dollar and the American navy. (Thomas Friedman, 2000) In international affairs the USA displays growing unilateralism. International development policies have been constrained by the Washington consensus. The USA fails to sign on to international greening protocols. Until recently the USA was perennially in arrears in United Nations dues. On several occasions (such as Nicaragua, Panama) the USA has not followed international legal standards and it ignores the International Court if its verdict goes against it. American policies contribute to the enduring stalemate in the Middle East. Take any global problem and the USA is both the major player and the major bottleneck. It is a reasonable question to ask whether this is just a matter of the current US administration or whether more profound dynamics are at work.     

Globalisation and the Market for Team-Mates

The globalisation of firms is explored at theoretical and empirical levels. The idea is that a global firm is a multi-cultural team. The existence of a global firm is somewhat puzzling. Combining workers who have different cultures, legal systems, and languages imposes costs on the firm that would not be present were all workers to conform to one standard. In order to offset the costs of cross-cultural dealing, there must be complementarities between the workers that are sufficiently important to overcome the costs. The search for the 'best practice' is analysed and empirical support from an examination of trading patterns is provided.     

Globalisation, Growth and Crises: The View from Latin America

In this paper I analyse the role of openness and globalisation in Latin America's economic development. The paper is divided into two distinct parts: I first ( Sections 2 to 4 ) provide an analysis of 60 years of the region's economic history, that go from the launching of the Alliance for Progress by the Kennedy administration in 1961, to the formulation and implementation of the market oriented reforms of the Washington Consensus in the 1990s and 2000s. I conclude that Latin America's history has been characterised by low growth, high inflation and recurrent external crises. In Section 5 I deal formally with the costs of crises and I estimate a number of variance component models of the dynamics of growth. I find that external crises have been more costly in Latin America than in the rest of the world. I also find that the cost of external crises has been inversely related to the degree of openness.     

Walls and bridges: towards a multi-disciplinary approach to the concept of flexibility

Writers from different academic and functional disciplines and perspectives have analyzed and prescribed the development of flexibility, primarily as a means for enabling organizations to cope with changing competitive conditions. However, there is somewhat little agreement, or even awareness, of what is meant by 'flexibility' within and across various fields (e.g. strategic management, organization theory and science and technology studies, and operations management). The degree of confusion and looseness associated with the use of the term 'flexibility' has prompted some researchers in one area (organization studies/ industrial relations) to call for a move away from the concept. The purpose of this paper is to consider various treatments of flexibility that reside within the walls of different, disconnected discourses on the notion. By applying a range of concepts which have relevance to flexibility to a reinterpretation of a study of North Sea oil technology, first conducted some years ago, it is intended to examine the bridges that may be built between different reserchers on flexibility approaching the notion from differing vantage points. Recognizing that the strategic management version of flexibility, strategic flexibility, is perhaps the least developed, and the extent to which that field is founded upon borrowing from other academic disciplines, the paper adopts a multi-disciplinary perspective to flexibility, which may contribute to the further development of strategy as an interdisciplinary field.     

Globalisation, capital mobility and tax competition: theory and evidence for OECD countries

Are the predictions of tax competition theory wrong? While the tax competition literature predicts that taxes on income from capital decrease with increasing globalisation, past empirical studies on various data find contradicting evidence. By using different data and additional elements of economic theory, this paper aims to challenge the empirical contributions. For a panel of 14 OECD countries and for the period 1967–1996, we find that globalisation has indeed a negative and significant impact on corporate taxes. Furthermore, globalisation tends to raise labour taxes and social expenditures. As a consequence, the so-called “efficiency” and “compensation” hypotheses of globalisation are not competing, but rather, both appear to apply at the same time. Efficiency has an impact on the tax-mix, whereas compensation is provided through increased social expenditures.     

The Impact of Liberalisation and Globalisation on Within-country Income Inequality

The paper reviews changes in within-country income inequalityover the last forty years, with particular attention to theyears of 1980–2000, against the background of the inequalityshifts intervened during the globalisation of 1870–1914.Withincountry inequality appears to have risen to differentextents in two thirds of the 73 countries analysed, overturningin several cases prior trends towards lower inequality. Forthe majority of the countries analysed, the paper rejects thehypotheses that such rise is due to a worsening of the traditionalcauses of inequality, such as high land concentration and inequalityin education, or to technological changes. Most of the recentsurge in income polarisation would appear to be related to thepolicy drive towards domestic deregulation and external liberalisation,though the specific impact of each policy instrument appearto vary considerably. (JEL D31, F02)     

Through the eyes of gratitude

There are complex considerations at play when deciding what nurse should work with which patient. During the course of a relationship between a patient and a nurse, or a nurse and a patient's family, remarkable and life-changing interactions can occur. The relationship between Patrick Barnes, his family, and the nurses who cared for them, was the inspiration for the creation of the DAISY Foundation. The DAISY Award focuses attention on the specific behaviors administrators want to encourage to bring the organization's vision and values to life. DAISY stories, presented publicly, uplift all who hear them. We can all learn a lot from the Barnes family story by remembering the power of compassion, the power of gratitude, and the power of recognition.     

海尔“迷雾”的背后

关于海尔的传言多年来就不绝于耳。海尔在股市的表现和它在产品市场上的鼎鼎大名似乎也不大相称。今年不同以往的是,媒体加入了怀疑行列……     

Bargaining Through Agents: An Experimental Study of Delegation and Commitment

While face-to-face bargaining has proven itself to be extremely efficient in the laboratory, it appears to break down often in the real world. This discrepancy, we assert, is explained by the fact that in the real world face-to-face bargaining is usually conducted not between principals but between the agents of principals. We find a substantial increase in inefficiency when bargaining is conducted through agents rather than through principals and offer an explanation for this rise in inefficiency. As such, this paper helps to shed light on the growing literature on delegation, commitment, and preference distortion games. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C78, C92.     

穿越理解的双重屏障－论史华兹的思想史观

本文讨论本杰明·史华兹学术道路的一个重要方面,即以方法论为中心的思想史观.作者认为,史华兹不是那种抽象理论的构造者,而是对思想世界有敏锐洞察力的历史学家,因此他的方法论论述带有显著的实践性格.     

Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth: the Role of Financial Intermediation

This paper analyzes the impact of public debt on financial efficiency in an overlapping‐generations model. We argue that public debt may reduce intermediation costs by increasing the collateral of entrepreneurs. This effect is stronger, the stronger the non‐Ricardian component of public debt, i.e. the more it is associated with intergenerational redistribution. This effect can be interpreted as future generations acting as a guarantee for the loans provided to the entrepreneurs of the current generation. Furthermore, multiple growth paths may arise as low taxes increase private collateral, which in turn boosts growth via financial efficiency, while higher growth allows to maintain the same debt/GDP ratio with reduced taxes.