Peace in the Middle East: What does if really mean for Israeli business?

The growing authenticity of the Middle East peace process is as much a product of the realities of the international business community as the efforts by the region's diplomats. The disintegration of the former Soviet Union and the results of the Gulf War have hastened the acceptance of Israel as a world class trading partner. Any meaningful peace should improve the region's living standards, but Israel is likely to be the major beneficiary in the short run. True stability in the region remains the challenge of business.     

What Are the Prospects for Live Streaming?

On January 16,New Culture,a listed company that had just announced cooperation with live streamer Li Jiaqi,saw its stock price hit up to the limit when the market opened.Early trading hours saw the trading of over 1.15 million transactions,and at the closing hour there were also over 700,000 transactions waiting to be executed.     

Exports and governance: Is the Middle East and North Africa region different?

This paper aims to analyse whether better governance rewards economic performance and facilitates the integration of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region into the world economy. In comparison with other regions in the world economy, MENA countries suffer from important institutional deficiencies, which generate insecurity and difficult international transactions. Despite this fact, the relationship between trade and institutional quality in MENA countries remains unexplored. A gravity model of trade augmented with governance indicators is estimated for the exports of 19 MENA countries, their 189 trading partners and for all exporters in the period from 1996 to 2013. The main results indicate that improvements in five of the six governance indicators increase exports from MENA countries, whereas better governance in destination countries does not affect MENA exports. Instead, each of the six governance indicators used has a positive effect on bilateral trade for the entire sample of exporters (189). Moreover, the effect of country‐pair similarity in governance indicators suggests that a similar level of regulatory quality and rule of law in exporting and importing countries increases exports from MENA countries. Similarities in voice and accountability also foster exports for the average exporter, but not for MENA exporters.     

Are the Direct and Indirect Growth Effects of Remittances Significant?

Development economists believe that migrant workers’ remittances are an important source of funds for long‐run growth. Therefore, recent studies have investigated the growth effects of remittances but reached different conclusions. In these studies, the rate of growth of output is simply regressed on both remittances and the channels through which remittances affect growth. Thus, no distinction has been made between the indirect and direct growth effects of remittances. Such regressions may give unreliable estimates because the channels may also capture some growth effects of remittances, making the growth effects of remittances insignificant. In this study, we make a distinction between the indirect and direct growth effects of remittances. Our model is estimated with panel data of 40 high remittance recipient countries with the system generalized method of moment. We found that remittances have no direct growth effects but they have small indirect growth effects.     

Do National Cultures Matter for External Audits? Evidence from Eastern Europe and the Middle East

Journal of Business Ethics - This study aims to examine the relationship between national cultural dimensions and the probability of a firm being externally audited. It uses a large set of...     

2005:The Process of China-ASEANFree Trade Area to Be StartedZero tariff for about 7000 kinds of products

"In 2005 China-ASEAN will totally start the process of tariff reduction,the great curtain of a big unified market for 1,800 million people will bepulled up," said Xu Ningning, Chinese Director of China-ASEAN CommercialCouncil at the Third Forum of Overseas Chinese Worldwide held in Beijingrecently. Starting from now, it will take 6 years to complete theconstruction of China-ASEAN Free Trade Area (CAFTA) in 2010, but this isalso a process during which both sides will constantly reduce tariffs andcancel the non-tariff trade barriers; this is a process during which bothsides will constantly merge economy with each other.     

Consumers’ value perception and value construction: the case of bottled water in the Middle East

This study illustrates how consumers realize the concept of value creation when making quick selections for a commodity in the Saudi market. Data were collected through a self-administered survey to customers; 1,045 completed and usable responses were received and analysed. The proposed model was tested through structural equation modelling using AMOS 22. Results indicate that product design and brand trust affect electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM), and product design, brand trust, and e-WOM influence consumers’ value creation. However, e-WOM does not mediate the relationship between product design and consumer value nor does it mediate the relationship between brand trust and consumers’ value creation. This study focused on one product (bottled water). Caution must be exercised in generalization of the results to other products/countries. Theoretically, this study extends the perception of value creation on a commodity and the influence of trust on perceived value. Although this study is based on a sample of Saudi Arabian consumers that is oversampling the age group of young consumers, it extends the rare empirical evidence base on the perception of value creation in the bottled water market, and the influence of trust on perceived value. The results suggest that firms could benefit from altering the design of their bottled water products to create higher perceived value and higher brand trust, differentiating themselves further from competition. The study contributes to the existing literature on consumers’ perceptions of bottled and branded water, taking into account e-WOM communication, and providing rare evidence on brand trust from outside of Europe and North America.     

Movies and the Mystery of the Missing Trade: Is Hollywood Good for U.S. Exporters?

Research has shown that consumers have a preference for goods based on the origin of production. This is important because it suggests that, in some cases, even lowering trade barriers may not significantly increase trade flows. In particular, flows may be lower than are predicted by trade theories such as Heckscher-Ohlin. Despite evidence that home consumption bias exists in many countries, it is only recently that research has begun to examine the sources of this bias.

This article fills a gap in the literature by testing a model that addresses the source of this consumption bias. The paper's model incorporates consumers' exposure to foreign products and culture through media imports and tourist visits as factors affecting consumers' preferences for foreign products. Using panel data from 19 countries, the article's results support the hypothesis that lagged exports of U.S. movies have a positive impact on other U.S. exports. Some evidence is also found of a positive effect of tourist visits on U.S. exports.

Since U.S. media exports may generate demand for other U.S. goods and services, opening up foreign media markets should receive a higher priority in U.S. trade negotiations. Another interesting implication of the paper is that overall U.S. export losses resulting from media piracy may be lower than previously calculated, as the consumption of pirated media products may increase demand for other U.S. exports.     

The Move to the Middle: Convergence of the Open‐Source and Proprietary Software Industries

In this paper we focus on open‐source software within the broader framework of the software industry. More specifically, we compare proprietary and open‐source software (OSS) companies in terms of three criteria: (a) approaches to the production of software; (b) business models; and (c) strategic interactions. We postulate three convergence hypotheses. First, there is evidence of convergence in production approaches: leading OSS firms tend to rely on R&D and acquisitions as intensely as leading proprietary companies do. Second, there is evidence of convergence in business models: through dual‐licensing models, top OSS firms derive substantial portions of their revenues from licenses, just as many proprietary companies do. Third, there is evidence of convergence in strategic interactions: the competitive strategies that a company follows do not really hinge on the ‘proprietary versus open‐source’ dichotomy, but on whether a firm feels threatened in the software layer where its core assets are located. This evidence of convergence raises a number of interesting questions for economic theory and for the analysis of the industry’s future evolution.     

Inequality and Unsustainable Growth:TWO Sides of the Same Coin?

Over the long run, sustained growth is central to poverty reduction.The rapid growth seen in much of the world over the past few decades, notably, but not only, in China and India, has led to an unprecedented reduction in poverty.And, in general, increases in per capita income tend to translate into proportionate increases in income of the poor.As Dollar and Kraay memorably put it, "Growth Is Good for the Poor."Some inequality is integral to the effective functioning of a market economy and the incentives needed for investment and growth.But too much inequality might be destructive to growth.Beyond the risk that inequality.     

The Africa Growth and Opportunity Act and its Rules of Origin: Generosity Undermined?

This paper describes the United States recently enacted Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and assesses its quantitative impact on African exports. The AGOA expands the scope of preferential access of Africa's exports to the United States in key areas such as clothing. However, its medium‐term benefits – estimated at about US$100‐$140 million, an 8−11 per cent addition to current non‐oil exports – would have been nearly five times greater (US$540 million) if no restrictive conditions had been imposed on the terms of market access. The most important of these conditions are the rules of origin with which African exporters of clothing must comply to benefit from duty‐free access.     

Trade Liberalisation and Poverty: What are the Links?

This paper asks whether a developing country's own trade liberalisation could translate into increased poverty, and what information would be required to identify whether it will do so. It plots the channels through which such effects might operate, identifying the static effects via four broad groups of institutions – households, distribution channels, factor markets and government – and the dynamic issues of volatility, long–term economic growth, and short–term adjustment stresses. An increase in the price of something a household sells (labour, good, service) increases its welfare. Thus, the paper first explores the likely effects of trade liberalisation on the prices of goods and services, taking into account the distribution sector. Also critical is whether trade reform creates or destroys markets. Trade reform is also likely to affects factor prices – of which the wages of the unskilled is the most important for poverty purposes. If reform boosts the demand for labour–intensive products, it boosts the demand for labour and wages and/or employment will increase. However, not all developing countries are relatively abundant in unskilled labour and trade can boost demand for semi–skilled rather than unskilled, labour. Hence poverty alleviation is not guaranteed. Trade reform can affect tariff revenue, but much less frequently and adversely than is popularly imagined. Even if it does, it is a political decision, not a law of nature, that the poor should suffer the resulting new taxes or cuts in government expenditure. Opening up the economy can reduce risk and variability because world markets are usually more stable than domestic ones. But sometimes it will increase them because stabilisation schemes are undermined or because residents switch to riskier activities. The non–poor can generally tide themselves over adjustment shocks from a liberalisation, so public policy should focus on whether the initially poor and near temporary, setbacks. The key to sustained poverty alleviation is economic growth. There is little reason to fear that growth will not boost the incomes of the poor. Similarly, while the argument that openness stimulates long–run growth has still not been completely proven, there is every presumption that it will.