Impact of China's WTO Accession on East Asia

The industrialized and newly industrializing economies (NIEs) in East Asia will benefit from China's WTO accession, and the developing economies in the region may incur small welfare losses. China will increase its demand for high-end manufacturing products from Japan and the NIEs and farm products, natural resources, and manufactured goods from developing East Asia. New foreign investment may flow into these expanding sectors. The overall impact on foreign investment is likely to be positive in the NIEs but negative in developing East Asia. The NIEs may face heightened competition in global markets as China's comparative advantage shifts into high-end products. (JEL F11 , F13 , F15 )     

Book Review

Qualitative Research in Tourism: Ontologies, Epistemologies and Methodologies. London: Routledge, 2004. 0-415-28086-9     

Bilateral Free Trade Agreements and Customs Unions: The Impact of the EU Republic of South Africa Free Trade Agreement on Botswana

The EU has indicated that after 2008 its trade relationships with developing countries will be dominated by the development of preferential trade agreements. Although not a consequence of the Cotonou Agreement, the free trade agreement between the EU and the Republic of South Africa (EU RSA FTA) was clearly one of the first fruits of this approach to trade relationships. However, there is no evidence that the design of the EU RSA FTA incorporated a comprehensive general equilibrium evaluation of the agreement for either the signatories or the other southern African nations. The analyses reported here indicate that while the EU RSA FTA may substantially benefit the signatories, there are appreciable negative impacts for other states, especially the Republic of South Africa's immediate neighbours. Moreover, the analyses indicate that the structural adjustments for African economies signalled by the FTA are substantial, which implies that there will be substantial economic costs associated with the FTA.     

Reducing counterproductive work behavior through employee selection

Counterproductive work behavior (CWB) has been a problem since organizations have hired employees. Recently, there has been increasing interest in explaining and addressing deviant behavior in the workplace. Our review of the research on CWBs shows a gap between theory development and the development of procedures to address deviant behavior. Moreover, studies in, for example, clinical psychology, have relevance for understanding CWBs, but cross-fertilization with other relevant literatures is not in evidence. We summarize the contributions of three relatively distinct lines of research. We contend that current dimensional personality theories should guide the implementation of interventions seeking to reduce CWBs. We describe validity studies that incorporate the development of employee selection procedures based on the assumption that CWBs should be anchored within a dimensional model and we present empirical results that support the utility of that model.