In The News

Expat Perks Drying Up - Even for S'poreans Abroad

Chuang Peck Ming March 9, 2004
Singaporeans are losing their 'edge' as professionals in a globalized world, but they still demand high expat salaries, reports this article. In China, employers of large companies favor Singaporeans for managerial positions because they speak English and Chinese fluently, and being Asians with working experience in western multinational companies, they "provide a good balance of...

Hungary Eager and Uneasy Over New Status

Mark Landler March 5, 2004
Poised to join the European Union (EU) in May, Hungary anticipates a larger share of the global trade pie. During the 1990's Hungary served as a "backdoor to Europe" for U.S companies, and now it hopes to market this role to Chinese companies that wish to sell to Europe – they could avoid costly import duties by producing all or a large part of their products within the expanded...

Small and Smaller

Thomas L. Friedman March 4, 2004
Falling transportation and telecommunications costs have taken the world from a "size large" to a "size small," according to New York Times Foreign Affairs Columnist Thomas Friedman. But the most recent globalization phenomenon, he argues, has shrunk the world to a "size tiny." The worldwide proliferation of personal computers and the bandwidth and common software...

A New Consensus on Free Trade

Gene Sperling March 1, 2004
During the Clinton presidency, “globalization with a human face” was the motto that underlined US trade policy. Today, under pressure from the outsourcing debate, both the Bush administration and the Democratic candidates are pushing to close the doors on open markets. Gene Sperling, director of economic programs at the Center for American Progress and national economic adviser during the Clinton...

Use Outsourcing to Spur Change in India

Bruce Stokes February 28, 2004
A provision in the new US Omnibus Appropriations bill prohibits the offshore outsourcing of some federal government contract work. And now Democratic Presidential hopeful Senator John Kerry has suggested requiring all call centers, in the US and abroad, to inform consumers where the operators are located when providing customer service. Calling these actions and policies "largely the product...

Outsourcing Debate - Part I

Rafiq Dossani February 25, 2004
The steady outflow of jobs, especially white-collar ones from the US is emerging as a major issue in the US. In part one of our three-part series on the outsourcing debate two scholars explain the reasons. In recent years, US manufacturing jobs have declined as corporations looked for cheap labor overseas. Still, it was long assumed that service work would provide continued growth for the US and...

A Global Generation Gap

February 24, 2004
According to the latest Pew survey on global attitudes, generational differences fuel much of the current social and political tension over globalization, nationalism, and immigration. Though strong majorities worldwide view increased global interconnectedness in a positive light, the concept is far more popular among young people in most regions. This greater reluctance among the world’s older...