The export competitiveness of the newly industrialised east Asian economies: How real is the Chinese threat in electronics?

This paper examines the export performance of China in electronics compared to the east Asian NIEs exporting to the USA, the European Union, and Japan between 1988 and 2001 using a dynamic version of shift-share analysis to overcome some of the inherent drawbacks of the widely-used static shift-share methodology. Our findings suggest that China has now emerged as a serious contender in the export market for electronic goods, but this position has not been a dominant one. For electronics as a whole, the principal gainers after 1995 appear to be newcomers China and Malaysia at the expense of the older Tigers, like Singapore and Hong Kong. To some extent this represents a natural process of ‘catch-up’. Moreover, no single NIE has dominated all categories of electronic exports. In the east Asian region, the less developed members of ASEAN would appear to be most at risk in the immediate future since they compete head on with China in lower-end manufacturing and are in danger of being ‘leapfrogged’ in the value-added chain. The more advanced NIEs are in a better position since they have time to increase value-added before China catches up and may benefit more from the opportunities China offers in terms of production and service complementarities

Is it Easier to Escape from Low Pay in Urban Areas? Evidence from the UK

In this paper we compare periods of low pay employment between urban and rural areas in the UK. Using the British Household Panel Survey, we estimate the probability that a period of low pay employment will end allowing for a number of possible outcomes, namely to a ‘high pay’ job, self-employment, unemployment and out of the labour force. The results show that there are statistically significant differences in the dynamics of low pay across urban and rural labour markets, particularly in terms of exits to high pay and out of the labour force. After controlling for different personal and job characteristics across markets, urban low pay durations are somewhat shorter on average, with a higher probability that urban workers will move to high pay. However, the results suggest that any urban-rural differences in the typical low pay experience are particularly concentrated among certain types of individuals, e.g. young workers, women without qualifications.Preprin

Go west for fame and fortune? The role of internationalization in the growth of Chinese telecom firms

This paper focuses on the role played by internationalization in the growth of Chinese telecom firms by comparing the three cases from China’s telecom sector – Huawei Technologies (Huawei), Zhongxing Telecom Equipment Corporation (ZTE), Datang Telecom Technology (Datang). Faced with a global market that was strongly oligopolistic and dominated by Western firms, we show that internationalization strategies triggered by resource seeking played different roles in the growth strategies of these three firms. The contrasting fortunes of these firms also underscores the fact that the success of internationalization strategies of firms from emerging markets cannot be understood without reference to the global competitive environment faced by firms

Evolution of a supply chain management game for the trading agent competition

TAC SCM is a supply chain management game for the Trading Agent Competition (TAC). The purpose of TAC is to spur high quality research into realistic trading agent problems. We discuss TAC and TAC SCM: game and competition design, scientific impact, and lessons learnt

The Goals and Assumptions of Conflict Management in Organizations

[Excerpt] This chapter examines how different goals and assumptions about conflict in organizations shape perspectives on managing conflict and resolving disputes. Four frames of reference are described: the neoliberal egoist perspective emphasizing the operation of the free market as the ideal method of resolving conflict; the critical perspective emphasizing broad societal divisions between labor and capital as the source of conflict; the unitarist perspective viewing conflict as primarily a function of interpersonal differences and organizational dysfunction, which can be remedied by improved managerial practice; and the pluralist perspective emphasizing the mixture of common and competing interests in the employment relationship, which requires institutional interventions to remedy the inequality of bargaining power that produces conflict. The pluralist perspective may best balance the often competing goals of efficiency, equity, and voice. It is described further in this chapter together with its implications for the design of dispute resolution procedures and conflict management systems

“The Impact of Housing Market Institutions on Labour Mobility: A European Cross-Country Comparison.” ENEPRI Working Paper No. 54, July 2007

This paper examines the effects of housing market institutions on labour mobility. The authors construct durations for individuals leaving their current job for a different job, becoming unemployed or leaving the labour market, from a sample of households from 14 European countries in 1994-2001. This data are then merged with country-specific housing market institutions, such as transaction taxes, and language and religion diversity. Similar to previous studies, estimated hazards indicate that home-ownership reduces job-to-job mobility as well as the probability to become unemployed or economically inactive on an individual level. However, a comparison between countries reveals that countries with high levels of home-ownership rates also have high levels of unemployment. Therefore, this paper is able to reconcile the seemingly contrasting empirical results from both the macroeconomic and the microeconomic level