Collective Efficiency and Increasing Returns

Recent research on industrial clusters in developing countries has unearthed some notable success stories of small local enterprises growing fast and competing in export markets. This paper focuses on some conceptual and theoretical points which help to explain them. The discussion is conducted with a view to building a bridge to current mainstream economics

Responding to Global Competitive Pressure: Local Co-Operation and Upgrading in the Sinos Valley, Brazil

This paper investigates whether enterprises in the export-oriented Sinos Valley (South of Brazil) have stepped up co- operation in response to intensified global competition in leather footwear. Recent cluster literature suggests that joint action is essential for responding successfully to major challenges. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, the paper shows a substantial increase in bilateral vertical co-operation, contributing to a major advance in raising product quality, speed of response and flexibility. In spite of these advances, the cluster has not been able to raise exports and profits have fallen. This seems related to the fact that upgrading was largely limited to the sphere of production. Upgrading in other areas such as marketing, design and image was attempted in an ambitious program of multilateral co-operation. The program failed for two reasons: some leading enterprises put their alliance with a major global buyer above co-operation with local manufacturers; and the state failed to mediate at critical moments between conflicting business associations and entrepreneurial alliances. The paper shows that the centrifugal forces of globalisation make local co-operation increasingly difficult and concludes with suggestions for future research on global competition and local upgrading

Technology and labour utilisation in industry

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China : its impact on the developing Asian economies

The rapid growth of East Asia, with China at its centre, has attracted global attention. Many authors have emphasised the emergence of regional production systems and the spread of high rates of growth across a large number of Asian economies. Nevertheless, the East Asian regional production system has not benefited all countries in the region equally. The more advanced Asian economies (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan) and the ASEAN-4 economies (Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines) have a very different economic relationship in China compared with the poorer countries of the Greater Mekong Subregion (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam). While the former have benefited from complementarities with China, supplying parts and components to largely export-oriented assembly plants, the latter are selling raw materials and resource-based products to China. China’s growth offers many opportunities for other Asian countries to accelerate their growth. Making use of these opportunities for purposes of income generation of poor people requires prioritising two policy areas. The first is connectivity. Some parts of Asia remain poorly connected to this regional production system. Better infrastructure and better trade links are key to enhancing the growth and incomes in these parts of Asia. The second priority is enhancing sustainability. The poorer Asian countries have increased exports to China, but much of this resource-based export growth is unsustainable. Sustaining and increasing trade between China and these countries has the potential to be more effective than increasing aid for the pursuit of poverty reduction and improved welfare in the poorer countries of the region. However, these countries will only benefit from the dynamism of the East Asian regional economy if policy initiatives directly address the issue of sustainability of resource extraction. These initiatives need to be taken not only in the exporting countries, but also in China itself. Keywords: regional integration; value chains; East Asia; economic development

Contested terrain: gender, labor and religious dynamics in horticultural exporting, Meru District, Kenya

This seminar will provide an overview of 18 months of Ph.D dissertation research on the interplay of gender and horticultural production in Meru District, Kenya. The significance of this project is that horticulture "traditionally" the domain of women, has become rapidly intensified and commercialized for export production. My research examines the implications of horticultural exports for women's rights to land and labor by focusing on the district's most important horticultural export crop, French beans. While French beans remain widely grown throughout the District, both production and sales have dropped dramatically since 1993. Thus, this project explores how the fluctuation of multinational capital is restructuring social life, transforming domestic relations and precipitating new class configurations. My tentative findings include a host of social crises: a staggering population growth rate (3.9 percent) that has incited acute pressures on constricting land resources and catalyzed an escalation of clan and court cases related to land disputes; an exacerbation of domestic violence and deviant social behavior such as prostitution, rape and incest; ubiquitous occurrences of alcohol abuse; and finally, the transformation of French bean market centers into loci of corruption and duplicity. These social dynamics underscore the tensions that emanate in an atmosphere of financial disintegration that is coupled with an absence of prospects for economic amelioration. As the panacea of French bean wanes women have turned to Christ to cope with the economic plights of their households. The omnipresence of Christianity powerfully shapes all aspects of social change, as the convictions of female submission and male dominance are propagated through variant Christian ideologies and men face the backlash of such indoctrination by women bewitching or poisoning them. Thus the material and ideational reconstruction that has taken root invokes significant queries on the gender dimensions of power and raises important questions for the gen