In The News

Save the WTO From the Doha Round

Ernesto Zedillo May 9, 2007
The World Trade Organization launched the Doha Round of negotiations to ease trade restrictions and reduce poverty. Attempts to revive the negotiations – stalled since summer of 2006 as the world’s wealthiest nations quarrel over how to end agricultural subsidies – continue to be stymied. The next development, predicts Ernesto Zedillo, director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization...

France: Waiting for Reform

Patrick Sabatier May 8, 2007
French voters have increasingly become aware that their country is at economic odds with the rest of the world: high unemployment rates, high levels of debt and massive social benefits reserved for a shrinking majority. Most candidates vying for president, and most of their supporters, recognize deep inside that such a system cannot be sustained amid intense global competition. So the French...

Investing: French Elections Test Attitudes Toward Globalization

Conrad de Aenlle May 8, 2007
Nicolas Sarkozy won election as president of France. Before the final vote, financial analysts pondered which candidate would produce the best financial climate for France. During the campaign, both candidates, socialist Ségolène Royal and conservative Sarkozy, had taken a firm anti-globalization stance – though globalization has enriched the French. French labor policies don’t wear well in a...

Sources: New Law to Jolt Outsourcing

Shen Jianyuan May 4, 2007
China is drafting policy to bestow preferential tax treatment for its firms that focus on information-technology (IT) or business-process outsourcing. “Industry insiders regard this as an effort to overtake India in the outsourcing industry,” writes Shen Jianyuan for “The Economic Observer Online,” adding that the new policies will define and boost an industry now described as “disorganized.” The...

Unions for a Global Economy

Harold Meyerson May 3, 2007
Workers are following the footsteps of business executives, expanding and gaining global influence by merging with counterparts in other sectors and around the world. “As unions begin their inevitable transformation into global entities, globalization's cheerleaders must define themselves more clearly, urges “Washington Post” columnist Harold Meyerson. “In other words, are they really for...

New Delhi's Delicate Balancing Act

Stanley A. Weiss May 3, 2007
As a thriving democracy, India has hundreds of political parties and is led by coalition governments. As a result, the party in power must please many special interests, not the least impoverished farmers who represent a majority, reports Stanley A. Weiss, founder of Business Executives for National Security. The government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is trying to defeat multiple problems...

Malaysia Backpedals on Modernity

Sadanand Dhume May 3, 2007
A fundamentalist streak of Islam within Malaysia is coming into conflict with the flourishing civil society that has made the nation a model of peaceful and democratic development in Southeast Asia. Muslims in Malaysia, unlike their Hindu or Christian compatriots, are ultimately subject to strict Islamic law, known as sharia. In fact, the national judiciary cannot override a ruling by a sharia...