In The News

Some Lost Jobs Never Leave Home

Jessica M. Vaughan May 2, 2004
With global trade expanding to all sectors, the US is now witnessing not just its goods being produced abroad, but increasingly, services as well. Many American companies, seeing the advantages of hiring foreign workers, have moved a step further – instead of moving service centers abroad, many companies are now importing foreign professionals into the US to do the job. This kind of outsourcing...

Is a Do-Gooder Company a Good Thing?

Amy Harmon May 2, 2004
Is Google, the ubiquitous search-engine website, a completely neutral resource for users worldwide? The corporate motto of the company is “don’t do evil,” but as reporter Amy Harmon of the New York Times writes, Google is so influential that questions of morality are difficult to address. Rankings in search results, for example, can make or break small businesses selling through the internet....

The Hollowing-Out of Hollywood

Christina Klein April 30, 2004
The blockbuster "Kill Bill" films exemplify the increasingly global nature of Hollywood, and not solely because of director Quentin Tarantino's heavy incorporation of foreign stylistic elements, writes media scholar Christina Klein. Like a growing number of Hollywood productions, both "Kill Bill Volume 1" and "Volume 2" relied heavily on offshore labor. While...

HIV Case Airs Secrets of Porn Industry

Alan Clendenning April 29, 2004
Boasting uninhibited women, lush tropical backdrops, and cheap production costs, Brazil has become a prime destination for adult film outsourcing. But Brazil also has the second highest incidence of HIV and AIDS in the western hemisphere. Last month, the porn industry's increasingly global risks surfaced when an American porn actor contracted HIV after shooting unprotected sex scenes with...

Silicon Valley Dons a Brave Face, Despite Worries

S.L. Bachman April 28, 2004
During the 1990s, Silicon Valley reigned supreme as the heart of technological innovation and the birthplace of the information technology revolution. Today, says globalization scholar S.L. Bachman, the tech hub is scrambling to mobilize regional resources to compete in the international technology market it helped to create. Economically, the San Francisco Bay region is recovering from the...

Danube Blues

Ben Aris April 26, 2004
Soon to become part of the European Union (EU), Hungary is now "busily trying to dump its Soviet-era trappings," says this article in the Guardian. Symbolic moves, like canceling Stalin's honorary citizenship and prohibiting the public display of communist red stars, are being taken to distance Hungary from its communist past. But economic concerns aren't so easy to legislate...

Free Trade and Outsourcing Are Not the Same

Clyde Prestowitz April 25, 2004
Financial theorists, politicians, and labor groups in the US have recently butted heads over the nature of free trade. Theorists credit skyrocketing amounts of global trade with increased standards of living worldwide, whereas many politicians have decried the loss of jobs overseas due to outsourcing and unrestricted competition. Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Economic Strategy Institute...