Liberalising the Movement of Natural Persons: A Lost Decade?

Liberalisation of international trade in services through the Movement of Natural Persons (Mode 4) remains one of the least negotiated issues of trade policy among the 144 members of the World Trade Organisation. Economists believe that there is a basic convergence of economic interest between the developed and the developing world for liberalising Mode 4. Yet the multilateral trading system has not facilitated greater worker mobility between the labour‐surplus and labour‐scarce countries. Is there any economic logic as to why cross‐border movements of workers have not followed the pattern predicted by international trade theory? Or are there strong socio‐political barriers that have come in the way of liberalising Mode 4? These are some of the questions the paper attempts to answer. The paper shows that the economic arguments against the free movement of natural persons are based on the narrow perspective of the welfare of domestic workers while ignoring the benefit it brings to the economy as a whole. Further, non‐economic arguments miss the point that the movement of workers under Mode 4 of GATS is temporary in nature, and so unlikely to have any lasting social and cultural spillovers. The paper gives specific illustrations from the recent past where temporary import of workers from labour‐surplus countries has enabled both developed and developing countries sustain their economic growth. It concludes by arguing that the environment for renegotiating WTO commitments under this important sector of international trade in services is better than ever before, even though the current world economic slowdown may delay actual negotiations for a while.     

Triad lessons: Generalizing results on high performance firms in five business-to-business markets

Significant differences are known to exist among organizations operating in different countries due to different national and organizational cultures, strategic orientations, and management styles. Less clear, however, is whether there are significant patterns of differences in how marketing-related factors drive performance in the most successful firms regardless of country. Building on a previous study of major Japanese firms [Deshpandé et al., 1993. Journal of Marketing 57, 22–27], an exploratory study compared samples of business-to-business relationships of Japanese, English, French, German, and US companies. We found the expected significant differences in organizational cultures, but found no country-specific slopes or intercepts in regressions relating factors such as innovativeness, organizational climate and culture, and market orientation to business performance. Successful firms appear to transcend differences in national culture and develop a common pattern of drivers of success which include primary focus on organizational innovativeness, a participative work climate, and an externally oriented organizational culture.     

Mobilizing grassroots’ technological innovations and traditional knowledge, values and institutions: articulating social and ethical capital

The Honey Bee Network has helped provide a sort of loose platform to converge creative, but uncoordinated individuals across not only Indian states having varying cultural, linguistic and social ethos, but also in 75 other countries around the world. What the Network is trying to do in a rather quiet manner may transform the way the resources—in which poor people are rich—are used in the future. These resources are their knowledge, innovations and sustainable practices.I first argue that the classical concept of social capital does not distinguish between the trust in society created for social good versus social ‘bad’. For instance, the trust among members of the mafia and other socially undesirable networks does not constitute social capital. I am also trying to emphasize that part of social trust which is guided by higher ethical values which may not have become social norms as yet. This is being characterized as ethical capital. Finally, I conclude that the Honey Bee Network has tried to articulate the social and the ethical capital of society at the grassroots to demonstrate how local individuals and communities are trying to solve local problems without any outside help.     

Dynamic internet pricing with service level agreements for multihomed clients

With the increase in internet coverage and the decrease in internet access price, the demand for good internet service has grown. Clients expect a guarantee in the quality of service (QoS) during internet access. In this paper, we present a model in which clients are given assurances by service providers to be able to connect to the internet and to get the bandwidth requested, and, if clients do not get the services they request, the service provider pays penalties to the clients. We consider internet clients that can dynamically connect to a number of internet service providers (ISP). When a client arrives at an ISP, he has to decide whether to accept the client, and then the price to charge from the client for the duration of its connection. Rejection of a client results in a penalty and delay in getting the requested bandwidth also incurs a penalty. We assume a Poisson arrival process with the rate of arrival sensitive to the price being charged. A client requests bandwidth for a time that is exponentially distributed, then the client is idle for a time that is also exponentially distributed; and then either the client departs or requests bandwidth again after the idle period is over. A service provider tries to maximize its income by charging appropriate prices based on its current state and deciding whether to accept more clients or not. Since penalties are imposed, such solutions also automatically balance load among service providers, and so the QoS to clients improves. We present solutions that maximize the income of service providers. The solutions are then compared using simulation. Simulation results show that our solutions significantly improve QoS of clients and increase the income of service providers as compared to a simple heuristic based solution that could otherwise be used.     

Configurations of low-contact services

This study uses a cluster analysis procedure to develop a classification model of low-contact services based on seven operations objectives. The effectiveness of the classification scheme is tested by demonstrating the link between the objectives, competitive priorities, and performance. This study also identifies eight underlying factors of competitive priorities in low-contact services. Furthermore, discriminant analysis on competitive priority dimensions shows that low-contact services consist of multiple groups and therefore should not be lumped into one group in any analysis scheme.     

An Evaluation of Financial Analysts' Earnings Forecasts for Hong Kong Firms

This study evaluates the accuracy and potential bias of analyst forecasts for Hong Kong firms published in the Estimate Directory and compares analyst forecasts to model forecasts. It also examines the association of forecast accuracy with various firm characteristics. The findings of the study show that on an overall basis analyst forecasts for Hong Kong firms are more accurate than model forecasts. Analyst forecasts for Earnings Per Share (EPS) are generally biased towards overstatement. The analysis of the association between forecast accuracy and company characteristics suggests that analyst forecasts for larger firms are comparatively more accurate than for smaller firms. As expected, the results also show that analyst forecasts with shorter time horizons are more accurate than forecasts with longer time horizons. The variability in firms' earnings, beta (market risk) or industry classification have no significant impact on the accuracy of analyst forecasts.