In The News

Benefits and Pitfalls of Globalization

Park Myung-seok June 1, 2004
A growing concern about globalization’s negative effects on national economies worldwide has some governments re-thinking long-held economic ideologies. The difficulty in creating jobs within the context of an expanding global employee base has some longtime champions of free trade, including the United States, looking to legislate against outsourcing. Similar movements to protect local jobs are...

US Firm to Control Chinese Bank

Peter S. Goodman June 1, 2004
China's banking industry has long been the focus of reform-oriented economists and policy-makers in Beijing. Corruption, a history of bad loans, and banks' obligations to lend to unprofitable state-owned businesses have caused some observers to call the sector the Achilles heel of China's booming economy. Yet things may be changing. After negotiations that concluded this weekend...

Oxfam Launches Fair Trade Coffee Chain

Tash Shifrin May 13, 2004
The growers of one of the world’s most globalized farm produce –coffee --may benefit from the worldwide concern about their plight. The UK based international development and aid agency, Oxfam and a private coffee company have launched a joint-venture: a chain of fair trade coffee shops named the Progreso Café. Fair trade coffee is the fast growing coffee sector in United Kingdom and provides...

Indian Voters Turn a Cold Shoulder to High Technology

Saritha Rai May 12, 2004
In the last few years, there has been a lot of hullabaloo over the wide-spread benefits of technology growth in India. The recent outcry in the US over the outsourcing of jobs to India only furthered the impression that Indians as a whole were winners in this phase of globalization. However, as this article in the New York times reports, the benefits of economic liberalization and globalization...

The Indians Are Comin’

Sanjeev Srivastava May 10, 2004
Global interest in Indian economic and cultural practices is swelling rapidly, from the labor outsourcing debate to Bollywood film exports. In the United States, India is a topic for newspaper front pages, Indian corporations are traded on the New York Stock Exchange and audiences gather for the country’s art. Delhi is creating regional alliances with China and Pakistan, and all systems are go...

Nonresidents Buy Stocks at Record Level

April 13, 2004
It seems foreigners are more interested in Japan’s economic recovery than even the Japanese who are seeking higher return abroad. Nonresidents bought just over 14 trillion yen worth of Japanese stocks in 2003, almost a half more than in 1999. Nonresidents were also net sellers of bonds by 1 trillion yen. For March of this year, nonresidents were net buyers of Japanese stocks for the 12 month in...

Globalization Alone Isn't Enough

Stephen Haber April 11, 2004
At a recent Summit of the Americas meeting in Mexico, US President George W. Bush urged Latin American countries to adopt a Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement so that the region could become even more integrated into the global economy. Latin American leaders, however, are cautious. In the 80s and 90s, most Latin American countries opened their economies to foreign trade and investment...