In The News

A Modern Tale of Meatpacking and Immigrants

Kate Linthicum February 2, 2010
For many years, Grand Island in Nebraska has hosted many immigrants passing through in search of work. But migration has come in distinctive waves: refugees from the Vietnam War in the 1970s, refugees from Eastern Europe in the 1990s, Mexican and Latino immigrants in the last couple of decades, and now a new wave of African refugees, including Somalis and Sudanese. Many of the new immigrants are...

Globalization: After the Recession

Justin Lin January 6, 2010
While some developing country leaders may decry globalization as exploitation by a different name, World Bank economist Justin Lin argues that the world is far too integrated today for any one country to turn its back on globalization. Indeed, for developing countries to benefit from globalization they must learn from the lessons of history, particularly when it comes to employing the principle...

Falling Dollar Pushes Manufacturing Out of Europe

Dinah Deckstein, Frank Dohmen, Dietmar Hawranek, Alexander Jung December 10, 2009
With the secular decline in the US dollar, some manufacturers like Mercedes-Benz that face rising costs and lower competitiveness are moving some production from Germany to the US. Normally, such companies hedge their exchange rate exposure through derivative contracts to protect them against rapid depreciation of foreign currencies. But such contracts become more expensive amid a sustained...

Black And White

Nayan Chanda November 10, 2009
China’s rising presence in Africa has received increasing notice in the press and increasing concern from the West. Such contact is not a new phenomenon as trade between the Middle Kingdom and the continent first occurred as far back as six centuries ago. Today, raw materials trade continues but it is not all one way – China invests directly in the region through mines, construction, and...

Outsourcing Progress

Nayan Chanda October 28, 2009
If you thought outsourcing would take a hit from the financial crisis, think again. While certain sectors have seen double digit declines, other end markets are growing. What the final tally for the year might be is unknown, but the results thus far are somewhat counter-intuitive. Outsourcing’s resilience in the face of such financial and political strain – lawmakers across the globe have often...

Global Crisis: Bangladesh Bucks the Trend

Zafar Sobhan October 14, 2009
Conventional wisdom would expect export-dominated, monoculture economies like Bangladesh to suffer badly from the recent financial meltdown. But that has not happened. According to Daily Star opinion page editor and 2009 Yale World Fellow Zafar Sobhan, there are four reasons why Bangladesh escaped unscathed. First, the government kept its head by holding only safe US Treasuries when everyone was...

Free Trade Has Enriched the World with More than Diverse Goods

Daniel Griswold October 2, 2009
Amid the rise in unemployment across the globe, trade is the oft-cited cause for the current malaise. Hence, according to populists, restricting trade should be the cure. But, Director for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute Daniel Griswold says the populists have it wrong. If one really wants to help the poor, fostering trade is the key since it delivers the lowest cost staple goods that...