In The News

Aussies Too Fire Broadside at Outsourcing

Kalinga Seneviratne March 1, 2004
For the last several weeks, US politics have been dominated by discussions about the shift of information-technology (IT) jobs to lower-wage nations. Now, Australians are joining in to register their protest. A new deal between American company IBM and Australian telecom giant Telstra threatens to move 450 Australian jobs to India, where IBM has said it will base the conglomerate's IT...

Outsourcing Debate - Part III

David Dapice March 1, 2004
Despite the political debates over outsourcing that are emerging in this US presidential election year, the economic story is quite simple. In the final installment of a three-part series on outsourcing, economist David Dapice says that outsourcing allows hundreds of thousands of people in developing countries like Vietnam the chance to earn wages, pull themselves out of poverty, and - in turn...

Use Outsourcing to Spur Change in India

Bruce Stokes February 28, 2004
A provision in the new US Omnibus Appropriations bill prohibits the offshore outsourcing of some federal government contract work. And now Democratic Presidential hopeful Senator John Kerry has suggested requiring all call centers, in the US and abroad, to inform consumers where the operators are located when providing customer service. Calling these actions and policies "largely the product...

Outsourcing Debate - Part II

Nayan Chanda February 27, 2004
The outsourcing of white-collar jobs to India and other low-cost countries has become a sensitive issue for US voters. In the second article of a three-part series on outsourcing, YaleGlobal Editor Nayan Chanda makes the case that America's economic fears about outsourcing are driving politics this election year. Chanda observes that "blue-collar workers, long wary of outsourcing, have...

What Goes Around…

Thomas L. Friedman February 26, 2004
New York Times Columnist Thomas Friedman argues that while outsourcing may relocate American jobs to low-cost countries, it also creates jobs by stimulating export demand for American products. "Look around this office," an Indian call center owner remarked to Friedman, "All the computers are from Compaq. The basic software is from Microsoft. The phones are from Lucent. The air-...

Outsourcing Debate - Part I

Rafiq Dossani February 25, 2004
The steady outflow of jobs, especially white-collar ones from the US is emerging as a major issue in the US. In part one of our three-part series on the outsourcing debate two scholars explain the reasons. In recent years, US manufacturing jobs have declined as corporations looked for cheap labor overseas. Still, it was long assumed that service work would provide continued growth for the US and...

Asylum Applications Down 41%

Matthew Tempest February 24, 2004
The number of asylum seekers to the UK has dropped since last year due to governmental reforms, according to David Blunkett, the UK's Home Office Secretary. Asylum seekers, once a contentious issue in British politics, now seem to be overshadowed by the uncertainty of migration from new members of the European Union. Many in Britain worry that citizens from the former Soviet countries will...