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International Competitiveness (international + competitiveness)
Selected AbstractsA Stochastic Measure of International Competitiveness,INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF FINANCE, Issue 1-2 2009KENNETH W. CLEMENTS ABSTRACT Government agencies produce indexes that purport to measure international competitiveness. The most common version is the real effective exchange rate, which is some form of weighted average of the real exchange rates of the country's trading partners. Such indexes convey a false sense of accuracy as they ignore the volatility among the component real exchange rates of the partners. As long as all real rates do not move in an equiproportionate fashion, in a fundamental sense real effective exchange rates are subject to estimation uncertainty. We demonstrate how this uncertainty can be measured and used to enhance current practice. [source] International Competitiveness in Medical Device DevelopmentARTIFICIAL ORGANS, Issue 4 2010Paul S. Malchesky DEng Editor-in-Chief No abstract is available for this article. [source] The UK climate change levy: good intentions but potentially damaging to businessCORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT, Issue 4 2004Ann Hansford The climate change levy (CCL) is an important part of the UK Government's response to being a signatory to the Kyoto agreement. Prior to the introduction of the levy there were sharply contrasting views, which ranged from Sir Robert May's view that it was ,an opportunity, not a threat' to the CBI's view that it should be an option of last resort. In order to consider the impact of the CCL on UK businesses, interviews were undertaken within one ,not for profit' and two commercial organizations to explore reactions to its introduction. The findings from the study suggest the primary foci of concerns are based upon increases to the cost base and threats to international competitiveness. Further, there is doubt that the ambitious targets signed up to by the UK Government are likely to be achieved, unless there are fundamental changes in support for businesses, or the targets are revised. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [source] ,Benchmarking' and Participatory Development: The Case of Fiji's Sugar Industry ReformsDEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 2 2001Darryn Snell Since the mid-1970s, opposition has grown within developing countries to the use of ,top-down' development approaches by foreign consultants. Disenchantment with these development strategies, it is often claimed, has led to the current incorporation of participation in consultants' development practices. This study is concerned with the practice and methods of participatory development planning. It evaluates the Strategic Plan adopted by the Fiji sugar industry in 1997 in response to challenges that are attributed to the pressures of globalization and international competitiveness. The authors assess the external consultant's self-proclaimed ,participatory methods' in the articulation of these challenges, in the design of restructuring programmes, and in shaping the discourses of reform more generally. The consultant's use of the fashionable ,benchmarking' methodology is seen to be one of the most problematic features of the ,participatory' process. [source] HAROLD WILSON'S DEVALUATION: A SALUTARY LESSONECONOMIC AFFAIRS, Issue 3 2008G. R. Steele The 1967 sterling devaluation opened the final act of the Keynesian epoch. The assurance ,that the pound here in Britain, in your pocket or purse or in your bank' had not been devalued, rests upon a ,fixed price' assumption invoked by John Maynard Keynes for the 1930s. It carried the implication that a currency revaluation is the only price change that is relevant to international competitiveness. That is nonsense. Devaluation succeeds in readjusting international payments only if it reduces the value of the pound in our pocket, purse or bank. [source] Green Tax Reform and CompetitivenessGERMAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 1 2001Erkki Koskela This paper studies a revenue-neutral green tax reform that substitutes energy for wage taxes in an open economy with unemployment. As long as the labour tax rate exceeds the energy tax rate, such a reform will increase employment, reduce the domestic firms' unit cost of production and hence increase international competitiveness and output of the economy. The driving force behind these results is the technological substitution process that a green tax reform will bring about. The resulting reduction in unemployment is welfare increasing since energy, which the country has to buy at its true national opportunity cost, is replaced with labour, whose price is above its social opportunity cost. [source] A Stochastic Measure of International Competitiveness,INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF FINANCE, Issue 1-2 2009KENNETH W. CLEMENTS ABSTRACT Government agencies produce indexes that purport to measure international competitiveness. The most common version is the real effective exchange rate, which is some form of weighted average of the real exchange rates of the country's trading partners. Such indexes convey a false sense of accuracy as they ignore the volatility among the component real exchange rates of the partners. As long as all real rates do not move in an equiproportionate fashion, in a fundamental sense real effective exchange rates are subject to estimation uncertainty. We demonstrate how this uncertainty can be measured and used to enhance current practice. [source] The EU-Mercosol Free Trade Agreement: Quantifying Mutual Gains,JCMS: JOURNAL OF COMMON MARKET STUDIES, Issue 5 2006GERMÁN CALFAT We identify trade in goods opportunities in a EU-Mercosul free trade area. Gains for Mercosul are rather concentrated, being mostly associated with a few agricultural commodities which face high protection barriers. EU gains are evenly spread, comprising a variety of market penetration possibilities. Trade deviation in the EU products is never higher than trade creation, confirming their international competitiveness and signalling that no great distortion of Mercosul's imports will take place. Balanced gains exist for both sides. For Mercosul, the agreement would act as a first serious trial for future liberalizations with other developed partners and as a warning on improvements in competitiveness. [source] Ocean liner shipping: Organizational and contractual response by agribusiness shippers to regulatory changeAGRIBUSINESS : AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL, Issue 4 2003Hayden G. Stewart The Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 1998 (OSRA) promotes changes in international ocean liner shipping. An important policy issue attendant to the passage of OSRA is the Act's likely impact on the international competitiveness of the sectors that depend upon ocean shipping. Thus, to establish how freight rates and other logistical costs of using ocean liner services are now determined, this study examines emerging methods of organization and contracting among exporters of food and forest products. We find that, although many shippers negotiate private contracts with carriers, many others utilize a third-party agent to negotiate a rate with a carrier on their behalf. This article also identifies differences between two key types of third-party agents. Finally, given that a shipper in this trade does not contract directly with a carrier, this article explains the shipper's conditional choice about which type of agent to use. [EconLit citations: L140, L980, Q130]. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Agribusiness 19: 459,472, 2003. [source] Die deutsche Steuerbelastung im internationalen Vergleich: Warum Deutschland (k)eine Steuerreform brauchtPERSPEKTIVEN DER WIRTSCHAFTSPOLITIK, Issue 1 2001Frank Hettich This paper attacks the widespread view that the latest (corporate) income tax reform in Germany was urgently needed to reduce the tax burden on the German economy. In the run-up to this tax reform, the public debate focused on nominal income tax rates and hence neglected the determination of the tax base. Empirical results on effective tax burdens in OECD countries show that a reform of German (corporate) capital taxation cannot be justified on the grounds of the tax burden. The international comparison of effective average tax rates shows that the corporate tax burden in Germany steadily declined from 1980 and was in 1996 lower than in most other industrialised countries. However, we argue that not only the actual tax burden but also the complexity of a tax system determines its international competitiveness. A German tax reform was , and still is , necessary due to the lasting complexity of the tax system and the relatively high tax burden on labour. [source] The relevance, practicality and viability of spatial development initiatives: a South African case studyPUBLIC ADMINISTRATION & DEVELOPMENT, Issue 5 2003John M. Luiz Policymakers have for long had an ambivalent attitude towards space and have been hesitant in dealing with intra-national models of uneven development. Issues surrounding regional development have always been tainted with ideological and political influences rather than being a purely economic consideration. This article addresses the thinking behind regional development policies and questions the role of spatial policy. It confronts this question in the South African case where local government capacity is particularly constrained and the boundaries between government tiers unclear. The first section outlines a selected critical history of the regional policy literature as it applies to South Africa. This is followed by an examination of South Africa's post-apartheid policy of spatial development initiatives (SDIs) focusing on the most contentious of these, namely the Fish River SDI, which has been plagued by controversy. It focuses on the tensions involved in development planning between government agencies and between politicians and technocrats. It also highlights the growing schism between government and civil society with the former emphasising mega-projects which reinforce its global competitive strategy but with limited apparent benefit to the local community. Lastly, it concludes that little effort was made to integrate the SDI into a provincial poverty strategy and argues that instead of utilising industrial decentralisation to redress inequality and poverty, a ,first-best' option may be for the government to target poverty directly by investing in various forms of human capital. Such an approach would lead to long-term economic growth and also improve South Africa's international competitiveness. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Benchmarking competitiveness in transition economiesTHE ECONOMICS OF TRANSITION, Issue 2 2001Clifford Zinnes This paper constructs an indicator for the current level of international competitiveness of countries in transition. We find that Hungary is the most competitive country in the group while Turkmenistan is the least. Competitiveness measurement, in our view, is a way to use uniform criteria to gauge the extent to which a country makes use of various levers to promote sustained improvements in its well-being. We construct our measure of competitiveness drawing upon both the popular literature on competitiveness as well as modern economic theory. The approach acknowledges the importance of synergies between firms, markets, and government and, above all, the crucial role of institutions. Our choice of variables stresses the special characteristics of transition countries. By bringing to bear all the existing data on these countries, together with new survey data collected for the purpose, we are able to go beyond the mere ranking of countries to decompose the sources of competitiveness into their constituent parts. This allows policy makers to identify areas where their countries are lagging behind relative to other countries in their region. Our indicator is also compatible with the Global Competitiveness Report series categories, thus allowing us to benchmark transition countries against the rest of the world. JEL classification: C82, O47, O57, P27, P52. [source] China's Great Ascendancy and structural risks: consequences of asymmetric market liberalisationASIAN-PACIFIC ECONOMIC LITERATURE, Issue 1 2010Yiping Huang China's great ascendancy from a poor agrarian economy to an economic superpower is unprecedented. But in the process, structural imbalances, resource inefficiency, and income inequality worsened rapidly. It is argued that the coexistence of China's extraordinary growth and serious structural risks are two sides of the same coin: asymmetric liberalisation of product and factor markets. Distortions in markets for labour, capital, land, energy, and the environment lower production costs, increase corporate profits, raise investment returns, improve the international competitiveness of Chinese goods, and therefore lift China's growth. But they also depress consumption. China needs to accelerate factor market liberalisation in order to complete the transition to a market economy and to lock the economy onto a more sustainable path. [source] ,LONG SLOW BOOM'?: MANUFACTURING IN NEW ZEALAND, 1945,70AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 1 2006Article first published online: 8 MAR 200, Jim McAloon industrialisation; management; New Zealand; productivity change Many studies of post-war New Zealand economy are highly critical both of economic policy and of the business sector, emphasising protection, complacency and sclerosis. This article argues that such accounts are excessively simplistic and, by analysing the structure and performance of New Zealand manufacturing during 1945,70, suggests that there was considerable innovation in both technological and organisational spheres. The result was that, to a greater extent than current accounts allow, New Zealand manufacturing pursued efficiency and international competitiveness. [source] Export-led industrialisation and growth: Korea's economic miracle, 1962,1989AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 3 2003Charles Harvie During 1962,1989, South Korea underwent a remarkable economic transformation from being poverty-ridden to attaining the status of newly industrialised nation. This transformation was achieved through the adoption of an outward-oriented, industry-led strategy. It was based, particularly during the 1970s, upon the development of large-scale industrial conglomerates and the attainment of economies of scale and technology to achieve international competitiveness. By the early 1980s, this strategy had resulted in major structural imbalances, a weakened financial sector, heavy concentration in domestic markets, and a repressed development of small and medium enterprises. By the end of the 1980s, despite attempts at economic reform, the structural and financial problems remained and became the country's undoing during the crisis of 1997,1998. This article reviews the question whether Korea's performance during this period can be described as an economic miracle. The empirical evidence is mixed and inconclusive, although the achievements of the Korean economy should not be underestimated. [source] FIRM SIZE AND EFFICIENCY IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN MOTOR VEHICLE INDUSTRY,AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC PAPERS, Issue 4 2009LILA J. TRUETT The South African motor vehicle industry has historically been considered a critical industry in the South African economy and the target of numerous government policies designed to protect it and/or increase its international competitiveness. This study examines the cost performance of firms in this industry according to their size, using data categorised by output level. The results are consistent with statistically significant economies of scale at the lowest output levels and a cost inefficiency averaging from about seven to nine per cent for all firms. The findings also suggest that all else equal, the smallest firms and the largest firms have lower unit costs than mid-sized firms. While this work suggests that policies that would give incentives for the smallest firms to increase their scale of operations might help to reduce their unit costs, further investigation needs to be done with respect to why firms in the mid-level size categories appear to be less efficient. 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