In The News

Why Globalization Is in Trouble – Part I

Branko Milanovic August 29, 2006
The dominant world powers historically pushed for globalization as a means of increasing wealth and influence. Yet those nations fret as the emerging powers of India and China embrace the same strategy. This two-part series by World Bank economist Branco Milanovic explores why both the world’s wealthiest and poorest nations fear globalization. In the first article, Milanovic argues that citizens...

More Than Wal-Mart

Robert Kuttner August 23, 2006
Wal-Mart is a symbol of the struggling worker who faces little hope of advancement, both in the US and abroad. The world’s largest retailer offers low prices by paying millions of workers minimum wage and passing many health-care costs onto government programs for the poor. The US government supports the work ethic. Since 1970, the US government decreased employer regulation, eliminated pension...

Apple Finds No Forced Labor at iPod Factory in South China

John Markoff August 19, 2006
A team of investigators sent by Apple Computer to review practices at a factory in the Chinese city of Longhua found no evidence of child or forced labor. The group conducted 100 interviews with randomly selected workers, combed through thousands of documents and investigated the factory site run by Foxconn, a Taiwan-based company. The Apple report did, however, identify several violations of...

Skills Outweigh Natural Resources – In Attracting Foreign Investment, Says Afeti

Bennnett Akuaku August 17, 2006
Africa is rich with oil, minerals and wildlife, but with adult literacy and child labor rates at just over 50 percent, the continent remains impoverished. By coincidence or not, Africa’s share of worldwide foreign direct investment in 2005 was about 3 percent, and the same percentage of the African population possesses higher education. Globalization places a premium on skills, suggests higher-...

When Labor Loses Out to Trade

Gustav Ranis August 10, 2006
International trade raises the standard of living for most people in any country, but inevitably results in a loss of jobs for a few. The challenge for governments is identifying and implementing policies that support readjustment of those few workers at a reasonable cost. International trade accounted for about 4 percent of layoffs in Canada, the US and the EU in 2000, according to the...

A Small Charity Takes Lead in Fighting a Disease

Stephanie Strom August 8, 2006
Diseases that are common among the world’s poor, such as black fever, are not on Big Pharma’s priority list. For the first time, with the help of the Gates Fund, a small charity is bringing a cure to market. Despite skepticism from other researchers, the non-profit Institute for OneWorld Health, based in San Francisco, tackled black fever, the second largest parasitic killer in the world after...

How to Deal With NGOs – Part I, China

Paul Mooney August 1, 2006
Both China and Russia sat up and took notice of the role played by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the political unrest and subsequent color revolutions in Georgia, the Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. This two-part series examines the two governments’ responses to NGO activity within their borders. China dispatched intelligence officers to research the NGO role in Central Asia and also conduct...