In The News

Africa Hosts its First Major Anti-Globalization Forum

January 25, 2006
For the sixth time since 2000, NGO representatives, fair-trade advocates, anti-globalization protestors and activists of all kinds unite at the World Social Forum, this week in Mali. By tackling the problems of inequality, debt relief and trade realities that trouble the developing world, the forum serves as foil to the World Economic Forum, a meeting of the world’s economic elite, held...

Europe’s Improving Economy Still Faces Some Hurdles Amid Global Competition

Marcus Walker January 24, 2006
With exports to the US, Asia, and oil-producing countries boosting corporate profits, Europe’s economy has attracted increasing optimism ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos this week. Wall Street Journal reporter Marcus Walker, however, warns us not to “count on Europe to float the global economy yet.” Cheap global competition—particularly from China and Eastern Europe—has inhibited...

Educating for the 21st Century – Part II

Orly Friedman January 17, 2006
Orly Friedman visits an experimental boarding school that introduces the tools of globalization to impoverished children. Started by technology entrepreneur Abraham George, Shanti Bhavan aims to be a world-class institution that propels India’s poorest students into the prosperous digital age, giving them access to world news and computer learning software. Despite challenges of running a modern...

Entr’acte: On Screen, Globalization and a Deadly Discontent

Alan Riding January 4, 2006
The Greek director Constantin Costa-Gavras has made a French film that some describe as a disturbing combination of the ludicrous and the all-too-real. “Le Couperet” is a thriller based on the 1997 novel, “The Ax,” by US author Donald Westlake. In the book, a downsized paper mill executive in his mid-fifties is unemployed for two years before he starts killing off competitors for a dream job....

Multinational Corporations: A Key to Global Poverty Reduction – Part I

George C. Lodge January 2, 2006
The legitimacy of multinational corporations has been increasingly questioned in recent years. In this two-part series, Harvard professor George C. Lodge and International Finance Corporation economist Craig Wilson argue that multinational corporations (MNCs) have contributed enormously to reducing global poverty. MNCs exist to provide value for their shareholders, but are also in a position...

Carpenters’ Union Courts Immigrants to Increase Clout

Miriam Jordan December 16, 2005
The union movement in construction has suffered steady eroding membership over recent decades as employers confront pressure from foreign competition. As a result, the industry turns to nonunion workers to reduce costs. In Denver, Colorado, illegal immigrants are a prime source for nonunion construction labor. Now union leaders reach out to illegal immigrants, promising higher pay and benefits....

Vietnam Goes Global

Jordan Ryan December 15, 2005
Although Vietnam had hoped to join the WTO before that body’s December ministerial meeting, an accession deal is not likely to finalized before mid-2006. Still, Vietnam’s eagerness to join the global trading system marks a noteworthy ideological shift for the ruling Communist Party, writes Jordan Ryan, the United Nations Development Program Representative in Hanoi. Vietnam’s Communist leaders...