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Opportunities to Strengthen US Strategic Competitiveness Recently, there has been great debate over the pros and cons of trade, with political leaders falling on both sides. The seeds of the [...]

As economic competition heats up, partners are key to US success. The 20th century was America's century. From recovering from the devastation of war to promoting prosperity and the rule [...]

Can Washington restore America's technological leadership? Until recently, the United States was the global technology and economic leader. Those days are gone. America's principal geopolitical adversary, China, has a larger [...]

It is now a part of conventional wisdom that both China and India are emerging economic, political and even military powers in the 21st century. Terms such as 'BRIC' and [...]

Emerging markets are focusing on domestic growth instead of exports. Developed nations can successfully enter these markets through teaming with local companies and fostering sound risk assessment in corporate leadership.

Abstract Countries have been shown to be competitive in specific industries. This paper contends that this industrial specialization can be understood in terms of an affinity between national 'models of [...]

This article discusses international economic competition and its implications for Russia's economic development. Issues include concepts of competitiveness and its evolution, competitiveness at the international and microeconomic level, and Russia's competitiveness in the national market.

Robert Brenner's analysis of the structural crisis of the late 20th century, in his Economics of Global Turbulence, is based on the observation of the decline of the profit rate, as is common among Marxist economists. Instead of the usual reference to the features of technical change, Brenner explains the decline of the profit rate in the whole economy by its fall within manufacturing industries, resulting from excess international competition. Brenner's basic insight is based on the observation that, after World War II, in the United States, the profit rate of manufacturing industries was larger than in other U.S. industries, and declined considerably more. This observation follows from a misinterpretation of profit rate differentials. Actually, the profit rate of manufacturing industries was not significantly different from that of most other industries, with the exception of a group of very capital intensive industries such as railroads, which accounts for only 13 percent of total output. This difference, which remains to be explained, has nothing to do with international competition. JEL classification: E11; L6 Keywords: Brenner; Profit rate; Manufacturing

Robert Brenner has argued in a recent essay that the decline in manufacturing profitability in the United States since the mid-1960s can be attributed mainly to intensified foreign competition. I attempt to show that Brenner's argument is logically incongruent, and does not fit with the observed behavior of the profit rate and the manufacturing trade balance. I also argue that Brenner's rejection of Marx's theory of the falling profit rate is questionable. JEL classification: E11, L6 Keywords: Brenner; U.S.; Profit rate

Why do national governments in industrialized countries subsidize many of their industries? Borrowing insights from literature on transaction cost economics and international trade, I build a model which tests the hypothesis that under threat of international competition disbursement of state subsidies varies systematically with the degree of asset (factor) specificity employed in a national economy. Asset specificity refers to the cost of moving factors (assets) from one activity to the next. I pool annual data on state subsidies in thirteen OECD countries during the period 1990-93 and regress them on two measures of asset specificity (physical and human capital) in the face of competition from abroad. Physical capital exercises a significant u-shaped effect on total and sectoral subsidies. Human capital has a weak negative effect on horizontal subsidies. The results extend the literature on asset specificity and trade in two ways. First, they provide empirical support in favor of the argument that asset specificity and subsidy protection are related. While theoretical claims concerning asset specificity abound, the literature is generally short of empirical studies. Second, asset specificity helps determine the scope of subsidies.

I develop a model where the mode of competition in trade affects wage differentials. Imports undermine wage premia under quantity competition and increase premia under price competition. I test these predictions after combining industry-level data with premia estimated by quantile regressions. Wage premia and imports are positively related for union and negatively related for nonunion workers. As predicted, the positive relationship is limited to unconstrained industry-years, and the negative relationship arises only in constrained industry-years. These trade effects account for 49% of the observed increase in wage inequality for union and 9% for nonunion manufacturing workers from 1984 to 1991.

A new study examines the experiences of a consortium of six Chilean manufacturers which worked together to conquer international markets.

Issues concerning the implementation of international competitive strategies by Latin American companies are discussed.

The four strategic options that can be adopted by Latin American companies seeking international competitiveness are discussed.

Competition is the most feasible way to establish sound money. Competing national currencies are superior to a single world currency supervised by a central banking group, since good money drives bad money out in a competitive system.

Non-governmental organizations have the potential for being the most effective response to inhuman government policies. Too often, considerations of globalization become excuses to reduce social support budgets. Enhancing government roles in trade makes economic competition between nations rather than corporations.

The Dutch practice of negotiated wage restraint and welfare state reform is often held up as a model for effective labour market adjustment. This article examines the distribution of adjustment costs under the Dutch model to determine whether it is stable in the long run both directly and by analogy with the situation in Belgium. The conclusion is that while the Dutch have succeeded in effecting a remarkable adjustment in the distribution of value-added, the costs of this adjustment have been skewed against increasingly large sections of society. Should these groups outside the distributional coalition find representation at the national level, the Dutch model for negotiated wage restraint and welfare state reform is likely to revert to political alternation and fit-for-tat economic competition., The world economy is playing havoc with the welfare state. Once settled, national systems for full employment and income redistribution have collided with volatile, globalised markets for goods and capital. [...]

This paper develops the idea that when markets are imperfectly competitive, final-good producers may gain from a production joint venture (PJV) that produces part of their input requirements even though the PJV's marginal cost exceeds the input's market price. Production by the PJV lowers the market price of the input and this can raise final-good profits sufficiently to make the PJV worthwhile. Also, use of a joint venture internalizes the positive externality from a lower input price. These results are motivated by a setting in which domestic firms are dependent on foreign oligopolistic suppliers for a key input.

With high economic stakes in the automobile industry and a history of trade friction, excess capacity in the world market may tempt governments to intervene to protect domestic firms. But [...]

The globalisation of markets has confronted governments with the importance of promoting the values and principles of competition - both domestically and internationally - and of developing a much broader [...]