Keynote Speech: Opportunities and Challenges for Mexico Today

Since its pre-colonial history, Mexico has demonstrated two contrary tendencies: the outward-looking, global trader and the protective, nationalist instinct. Today, the seven major constitutional reforms of the PRI government reflect the former. However, the teacher’s union, some presidential advisors, and the criminal justice system reflect a preference for the latter. The more progressive sectors of Mexican society assert the need to participate in the global economy, but latent protective and nationalist tendencies throw up challenges. This article examines several contemporary examples of each tendency and demonstrates how they coexist uneasily in modern Mexico.     

Global rice trade competitiveness: a shift‐share analysis

Changes in country shares of global rice exports from 1997 to 2008 are analyzed using an econometric, shift‐share analytical framework. This framework estimates growth rates and disaggregates these rates of change into geographical structure effects and performance effects. The performance effect is further decomposed into two subeffects accounting for adaptation to changes in the geographical structure of the marketplace and a competitiveness effect. A restricted, weighted, two‐way fixed effects model is specified for estimating the geographical structure and performance effects. Results indicate a growing concentration among a few exporting countries in the global rice market, and the competitiveness effect is often significant. Government policies affecting rice trade and the competitiveness of trading partners are important factors for the shifts in rice trade patterns. In particular, Vietnam is an emerging, major player in global rice trade in competition with Thailand.     

Women in business: entrepreneurship, ethics and efficiency

This article begins by reviewing some of the main theoretical approaches to entrepreneurship. We then discuss the measures proposed in the literature to benefit women, facilitating reconciliation of work and family life and examining the view of authors who consider the negative effects of these measures. Finally, we contemplate situations where the measures benefiting women are based on economic or ethical reasons. This last section qualifies the universalist approach underlying work-family life reconciliation, describing the context for interaction between women and entrepreneurial activity.     

Smarter offshoring

During the past 15 years, companies have flocked to a handful of cities in India and Eastern Europe for offshore service functions. As a result, the most popular sites are now overheating: Demand for young professionals is outstripping supply, wages and turnover are soaring, and overburdened infrastructure systems are struggling to serve the explosive growth. The happy news is that the tight labor markets in the well-known hot spots are the exceptions, not the rule. Many attractive alternatives are emerging around the world. According to a McKinsey Global Institute study, more than 90% of the vast and rapidly growing pool of university-educated people suitable for work in multinationals are located outside the current hot spot cities. For instance, Morocco is now home to offshore centers for French and Spanish companies requiring fluent speakers of their home languages. Neighboring Tunisia has used its modern infrastructure, business-friendly regulations, and stable, low-cost workforce to attract companies such as Siemens and Wanadoo. Vietnam offers university graduates who have strong mathematics skills; speak French, English, German, or Russian; and do not demand high wages. The problems facing the hot spots, coupled with the emergence of many more countries able and willing to provide offshore services, mean that picking a site has become more complicated. In choosing a location, companies will have to focus less on low wages and much more on other ways that candidate cities can fulfill their business needs. They will have to be much more rigorous in articulating precisely what they require from an offshore location. That means evaluating their unique needs on a range of dimensions and understanding how alternative locations can meet those needs for the foreseeable future.     

Strategies and goals of community-based injury prevention programmes--a mixed-methods study of 25 Scandinavian WHO Safe Communities

Documentation and analysis of prevention goals and interventions employed by community-based injury prevention programmes is vital to advance the knowledge and understanding of synergistic multi-strategy injury prevention programmes. This study examined the goals and interventions of 25 Scandinavian community-based injury prevention programmes in WHO-designated Safe Communities. Collection and analysis of quantitative data from survey questionnaires to the programme coordinators was followed by collection and analysis of qualitative data from structured interviews with programme coordinators from eight of the programmes. The results demonstrated that the programmes under study predominantly relied on "intuitive" and subjective methods for selecting interventions. The programmes largely failed to transform injury surveillance data into information and knowledge that could prioritize community safety strategies and measures, due to insufficient time and personnel resources. The results demonstrated the importance of combining passive approaches with active interventions. Educational efforts were considered essential to the programmes. The programmes preferred to rely on broadly stated goals rather than specific objectives.     

职业巅峰

格林斯潘在没有开始使用其典型的格林语言前,描绘了一幅极其迷人的自画像. 作者:Daniel Okrent <财富>,2007年10月8日     

车轮上的客厅

电视上播放的所有汽车广告听上去都像是在推销个人计算机,这可不是没有原因的.在许多计算机和消费电子播放器的帮助下.汽车生产商正想方设法在它们的车辆中复制与购车者的家里几乎完全一样的综合娱乐中心.     

The role of intangible attributes of luxury brands for signalling status: A systematic literature review

Previously, signalling status had been primarily studied from the conspicuousness of luxury brands, including high prices and prominent designs. However, less attention has been directed toward other elements of brands that could be strategically managed in order to enable consumers signalling status. This study synthesizes the literature using a framework based on four intangible attributes of luxury brands: user profile, purchase usage, personality and values and heritage. The topics studied under each of the four intangible attributes were analysed using a systematic approach. Based on the interconnectedness of the topics studied, this review proposes that the intangible attributes used as a framework may have a synergistic interaction, in contrast with the current perspective that considers them as independently and equally relevant for consumers signalling status. It also reports the psychological function of these intangible attributes and supports the notion that consumers use luxury brands either to routinely affirm their status within a group or to enhance that status. This review contributes to the literature on luxury and signalling by considering luxury consumption as a social process. A functional perspective on the intangible attributes of luxury brands provides the basis for some insightful directions to advance this field of research.     

The Intergenerational Effects of Recessions

Several studies analyze the contemporaneous effects of recessions on individuals and their children. This paper shows that recessions also affect future offspring, not born yet. By linking fathers and offspring from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we find that a percentage-point increase in the national unemployment rate experienced by men between ages 16 and 20 reduces their future offspring's annual wages by 4 percent, occupational prestige by 3 percent, and education by 0.2 years. We then investigate the mechanisms explaining our findings.