A Study On Influencing Factors And Performance Of Logistics Outsourcing Practices Among Electrical And Electronics Firms In Malaysia

Penyumberluaran aktiviti logistik telah menjadi strategi popular bagi kebanyakan organisasi dalam memburu kecemerlangan operasi di era persaingan sengit pasaran global. Logistics outsourcing has been growing as a popular strategy for many organizations in pursuit of operational excellence despite the fierce competitive market globally

The Contractionary Short-Run Effects of Nominal Devaluation in Developing Countries: Some Neglected Nuances

This paper extends the model developed by Krugman and Taylor (1978) to take into account interesting features of the evolving structure of global trade. The growing presence of transnational production chains and differential pricing behaviour of exports destined for industrial and developing countries are accommodated. Individual country and panel data pass-through estimates derived from several econometric approaches are provided to justify the latter extension. The likelihood of contractionary short-run effects of devaluations is shown to be positively related to: (1) the proportion of a country's exports destined for other developing countries, and (2) the presence of TNCs in either the export or home goods-producing sector. Unlike the Krugman-Taylor case, devaluation will generally have a contractionary impact even if: (1) trade is initially balanced, (2) consumption behaviour does not differ between wage and profit earners, and (3) the government sector has a high marginal propensity to consume in the short-run. The resulting policy implications underline the need to take into account these increasingly important nuances of international trade while designing exchange rate policies for developing countries. JEL Categories: F12, F14, F23, F41Differential pass-through elasticities, contractionary devaluations, transnational corporations, error correction models, autoregressive distributed lag models, structuralist models.

The Exchange Rate, Diversification, and Distribution in a Modified Ricardian Model with a Continuum of Goods

Several recent empirical and theoretical studies have revived interest in the relationship between the level of the exchange rate and economic development. This paper develops a dynamic model based on the Ricardian framework with a continuum of goods to consider the issue from a somewhat different perspective. While directly suppressing the real wage could also lead to diversification, what makes nominal devaluation a particularly useful tool is that it makes it possible to expand domestic profits while limiting internal distributional conflict and the ensuing negative effects on development.economic development; exchange rate

Must Improved Labor Standards Hurt Accumulation in the Targeted Sector? Stylized Analysis of a Developing Economy

This paper analyzes a stylized small open economy. The analysis clas- sifies the economy into two tradable output-producing sectors: a manu- facturing sector and a (mainly tourism-related) services sector. Assuming sectoral differences based on stylized facts, we explore the impact of higher labor standards in the manufacturing sector on the long-term prospects of the economy using comparative dynamic exercises to analyze changes in output, foreign direct investment, relative prices, sectoral distribution, and accumulation. We find, in particular, that imposing higher standards across the manufacturing sector could, in the long run, shift the structure of the domestic economy in favor of that sector. JEL Categories:

Imposing a balance of payment constraint on the Kaldorian model of cumulative causation

We combine two strands of Post Keynesian growth theory by imposing a balance of payments constraint on a Kaldorian cumulative causation model. The effects of external and internal shocks, and the degree to which cumulative causation comes into play depends on the exchange rate and capital account regimes. Exports act as the only exogenous drivers of growth only under a regime of fixed exchange rates and in the absence of relative price effects. Under flexible exchange rates, by contrast, it is internal demand that serves as the only exogenous driver of of growth. Moreover, regardless of the type of shock, the presence of cumulative causation does not boost growth, although it may render growth more sustainable. JEL Categories: E12, F43, F32, O40Cumulative causation, balance of payments constraint, export-led growth, capital account openness, exchange rate regime.

Integration, Informalization, and Income Gaps in Developing Countries: Some General Equilibrium Explorations in Light of Accumulating Evidence

Recent post-liberalization decades have seen increasing gaps between wages and profit in- come, rising skill premia, and disappointing formal sector employment growth in many develop- ing countries. This paper presents an attempt to reconcile some of these developments with the help of modified versions of simple standard trade theory factor endowment models. Measures undertaken to enhance public sector efficiency and attract investment in the export sector can create a conflict of interest between the owners of capital and labor, and increase the rental- wage and skill-unskilled wage gaps, contra the predictions of the Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson model. Moreover, increasing inequality can exist side-by-side with increasing informalization of the economy. The greater unskilled labor intensity of the informal sector, factor market rigidities in the formal sector, and the sector specificity of some factors crucially influence the outcomes of policy experiments. Even within a simple framework that assumes full employment of resources, large segments of labor may have good reason to fear the consequences of reform. JEL Categories: F16, O17, F11Specific factors model, Ricardo-Viner model, Heckscher-Ohlin model, informaliza- tion, international production networks, elasticity of factor substitution, nominal wage rigidity, income inequality, skill premium.

Exploring the Robustness of the Balance of Payments-Constrained Growth Idea in a Multiple Good Framework

This paper derives the balance of payments-constrained growth (BPCG) model as a special case of a three good framework that incorporates exportables, importables, and non-tradables. The conditions under which the canonical form of the BPCG rate can be derived are made explicit and the assumptions scrutinized. It is shown that the presence of non-tradables, substitutability between exportables and importables, and incomplete specialization in expenditure generally dampen the externally-constrained growth rate. These findings help explain why empirical estimates tend to overestimate the BPCG rate. Overall our findings underscore the observation that tests of the BPCG hypothesis are as much a test of the internal structure of the economy under consideration. JEL Categories:

Pursuing Manufacturing-BasedExport-Led Growth: Are Developing Countries Increasingly Crowding Each Other Out?

This study empirically investigates the presence of crowding out effects emerging from intra-developing country competition in export markets for manufactured goods. Export equations are estimated for a panel consisting of twenty major developing country exporters of manufac- tures, after developing weighted price and quantity indexes based on their exports to thirteen major industrialized countries. The results indicate that in spite of an increase in the elasticity of industrialized country expenditures on imported products, crowding out effects became much more significant in the 1990s. The estimated crowding out effects vary across time periods, SITC categories, and levels of technological sophistication of exports. JEL Categories: F10, O01, F42Crowding out, export displacement, real exchange rates, intra-developing country competition, dynamic panel data techniques, generalized method of moments.