China in the World Trade Organization: Antidumping and Safeguards

China finds itself in a unique situation on antidumping andsafeguard issues. It is by far the main target of antidumpingmeasures, but (so far) one of the smallest users of such measures.China's World Trade Organization (WTO) accession protocol includesstringent antidumping and safeguard provisions that its tradingpartners may use against its exports. The article examines threerelated concerns: how quickly large developing economies canbecome intensive users of antidumping measures, an evolutionraising concerns about China's recent antidumping enforcement;how China could minimize its exposure to foreign antidumpingcases, a recipe for both improving trade outcomes and for China'staking a leading role in reforming WTO antidumping; and theopportunities that the Doha Round of trade negotiations offerto China for negotiating stricter disciplines both on WTO contingentprotection and on the use by China's trading partners of thespecial provisions included in China's accession protocol.     

Organizationally Sensible vs. Legal-Centric Responses to the Eroding Employment At-Will Doctrine

Most private sector American employers have responded to the uncertainty created by the erosion of the employment at-will doctrine by adopting tactics aimed at avoiding the perceived costs associated with salient legal concerns (e.g., requiring written agreements to preserve the at-will relationship and defeat implied-contract claims). This article discusses the limitations of such a highly legal-centric approach, and provides an alternative decision framework that will promote more strategic, or organizationally sensible, employer responses. In addition to providing specific guidance for employers facing the employment at-will issue, the article's analysis and discussion illustrates a general approach that has relevance wherever organizational decision makers address employment decisions with potential legal implications.     

A Note on Changes in the Earnings and Unemployment Structures in Spain Evidence from the Luxembourg Income Study

This note tests whether the extraordinary rise in Spanish unemploymentin the 1980s can be traced back to rigidities in the earningsstructure in the face of relative net demand shocks againstthe unskilled (this claim is also known as the "Krugman hypothesis").I can establish that youth joblessness is key to the Spanishunemployment problem, but sampling procedures in the data setmake it impossible to track the youth unemployment problem acrosstime in a satisfactory way. Even though high youth unemploymentis consistent with the Krugman hypothesis, substantial skillupgrading of the Spanish labour force in the 1980s explainswhy the low education groups did not experience an increasein relative unemployment. (JEL J21, J31, J64)     

Comparing bank concentration across countries

Cross-country comparisons of traditional measures of concentration, such as the Herfindahl index, are of limited use for answering normative questions such as: ‘Is the banking system too concentrated in our country?’ This paper develops a measure of concentration, essentially by normalising the Herfindahl index by a minimum feasible value for that index based on market size for each country. A formal derivation is given, and the measure is related to the mark-up of price over marginal cost for banking services. The empirical implications of the new measure are illustrated by reference to some recent studies.     

Truth Half Told: Finding the Perfect Pitch for Advertising and Marketing in Socialist Yugoslavia, 1950-1991

Beginning in the 1950s, advertising and marketing specialistsin Yugoslavia campaigned aggressively to change public and officialperceptions of their work. By casting commercial promotion interms of categories already established as legitimate in theideology of Yugoslav socialism, the industry gradually naturalizedadvertising and marketing, transforming them from suspect capitalistpractices into apparent necessities of progressive, rationalproduction and distribution. Although the rhetoric used in thiscampaign consistently appealed to socialist values, in practiceYugoslav advertising and marketing were largely based on Westernmodels. Yugoslav commercial promotion was only superficially"socialist advertising"; practitioners' arguments tended toobscure the true qualities of the industry.     

Giving mergers a head start

Mergers with substantial business overlap face a barrier to speedy integration: Antitrust regulations limit the information companies can share before a deal closes. But as Dow Chemical and Union Carbide found, premerger planning by "clean teams" of former employees can help merging companies hit the ground running.     

Public sector health insurance trusts

Public sector associations have successfully developed and run employee health insurance pools for almost 30 years, providing members with savings and flexibility not available from commercial health insurance carriers. This article looks at the models, technical tools and governance philosophy that have contributed to their success in a very challenging business environment.     

Mercantilism and Imperialism in the Rise and Decline of the Dutch and British Economies 1585-1815

This essay locates the rise and relative decline of the economy of the Netherlands over the period l585-l8l5 in geopolitics. It has used the rise of Britain, l688-1815 as a point of reference and for bilateral comparison, in order to validate a hypothesis that the degree of avoidable decline had less to do with inefficiencies in the economic sphere, but flowed essentially from political failures to countervail blatant and violent challenges from the new nation's mercantilist rivals – particularly France but also Britain. I concluded that a similar pattern of political complacency, cultural inertia and liberal myopia marked the response of imperial Britain to the threat from Germany after its reunification in l870.