Book Review

Books reviewed:
Ira A. Jackson and Jane Nelson, Profits with Principles: Seven Strategies for Delivering Values with Values .     

Comparing the impacts of Internet technology and national culture on online usage and purchase from a four-country perspective

The Internet has successfully generated an ever-expanding cohort of users for all its major concomitant activities, including information gathering, communications and transactions. So far no attempt has been made to validate whether such a success is so deep as to transcend national cultures. Nor any work has been conducted to compare the internationalisation¹ performances between online usage activities. The current study addresses these two research gaps from the perspective of four countries, i.e. Britain, Germany, Japan and Taiwan. Results show that although the technological forces have been quite successful in internationalising overall online usage activities, they succumb to the cultural forces as far as only the transactions activity, or more colloquially online purchase, is concerned. This indicates the relative difficulty in internationalising online purchase vis-à-vis other online usage activities. Further research on locating a series of step functions or kick-off time points regarding the development of online purchase is suggested.     

Effectiveness and Effects of China’s Capital Controls

I. IntroductionNations at every stage of development and in every region of the world are more closelylinked through trade in goods and services, through flows of funds and investments ineach others’ economies than ever before. But in sharp contrast to more and more nationsloosening restrictions on international trade, controls over capital flows are still substantialnearly everywhere except in the most developed economies. This is certainly the case inChina, where restrictions on movements …     

Fragmentation, Engel's Law, and Learning

This paper outlines the conditions under which trade is beneficial for a developing country's growth. A developing country suffers from two disadvantages: low income and a comparative disadvantage in the production of modern manufactured goods—goods which allow a high rate of human capital accumulation through learning by doing. Low income together with Engel's law imply that developing countries consume and produce very few modern goods in autarky and hence grow slowly. With international fragmentation of production, a developing country may find comparative advantage in the production of some stages of modern goods despite an absence of comparative advantage in the production of modern goods under “100% local content.” More resources can then be allocated to the modern goods sector leading to greater learning externalities and hence growth under free trade than in autarky.