In The News

Shopkeeper Took on Coke - and Won

Jo Tuckman November 17, 2005
“I thought that they were going to be able to say to me, 'Look, ant, we stamped on you,” declared a triumphant Raquel Chavez, “I said I'd rather die with my dignity intact than be trampled on.” In a landmark case, the 49-year-old corner shop owner from a poor neighborhood of Mexico City brought charges against a Coca-Cola subsidiary and fifteen of its distributors in 2003. Following a...

Protecting Ideas is Crucial for U.S. Business

Alan Murray November 10, 2005
Regulating copycat products and services internationally may become the capitalist struggle of the 21th century. Brands, patents, and copyrights fuel a large portion of the international economy. Intellectual property in the United States has become a $5 trillion industry. As access to information and products becomes simpler and ever more rapid, idea theft has become a costly proposition. The...

The Rising Risk of a Hard Landing

Stephen Roach November 4, 2005
In 2005, America’s deficit will account for 70 per cent of the total deficit positions in the global economy, By contrast, it will take ten countries to account for 70 percent of the global surplus. While Washington wants to shift the blame, this disequilibrium is largely the result of a US economy short on savings, writes Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley. And because of the...

European Luxury Brands Challenge Chinese Pirates

Jonathan Watts November 4, 2005
Centuries ago, China exported its luxurious silks out to the world on camel caravans over the meandering Silk Road. Now, Chinese venues like the Silk Market in Beijing offer counterfeit luxury goods to tourists at a fraction of their legal cost. In the past decade, the Asian giant has become the source of seventy percent of the world’s counterfeit products, frustrating foreign businesses and...

Romancing the Globe

Ibsen Martinez November 1, 2005
Approximately 2 billion people around the world tune in on a regular basis to watch Latin American soap operas known as “telenovelas.” While Hollywood and the US television industry are often seen as the defining forces of cultural globalization, the success of telenovelas is a global phenomenon that is being celebrated as “reverse cultural imperialism.” The plotlines of telenovelas usually...

Painful Truth of the Call Centre Cyber Coolies

Amelia Gentleman October 31, 2005
Over the recent years, India’s ability to earn contracts from Western companies looking to outsource services has been seen as a globalization success story. Call centers, where Indian employees handle questions and offer support to Western consumers have become a major new industry in India, and have been portrayed as providing “good salaries and new career opportunities in the developing world...

Prepare Now for Sino-Indian Trade Boom

Niraj Dawar October 31, 2005
China and India are natural trading partners, but years of political hostility have prevented the two from taking full advantage of their complementary relationship. That is changing: Sino-Indian trade may skyrocket from $14 billion annual in 2004 to as much as $450 billion in 2010. Multinational corporations now need to change their business models if they hope to profit from this new surge...