Search

In theories of microeconomics, exchange costs are not taken into account when discussing exchange benefits, and an implicit assumption is made that exchange costs are zero. On the other hand, in the traditional international economy, the cost of trade was not considered very carefully. However, in the modern economy, trade costs constitute a significant portion of global trade. This article examined the effect of trade costs on trade volume in two groups, high-income, and upper-middle-income countries, over the period of 2006-2015 using the Panel data analysis method. The results of the study show that transportation costs and the number of commercial documents have a negative effect on the trade volume in high-income countries. In high-income countries, trade costs lead to a decrease in trade volume, while in upper-middle-income countries, transportation costs and the number of trade documents do not have a significant impact on trade volume. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article addresses the problems related to the functioning of the worldwide market of wheat and meslin. The authors identify the countries that over the past 17 years have been among the top 10 world leaders in terms of the value of export and import of wheat and meslin. The structure of wheat export by Ukrainian regions is analysed in comparison with the total export. The localisation coefficient is applied to measure the regional unevenness of the distribution of wheat export volumes and the total export by regions of the country. The modelling and forecasting of the volumes and prices of export of wheat and meslin from Ukraine are based on Singular Spectrum Analysis. The study particularly focuses on the individual components of time series, such as trend, annual, semi-annual, four-month, three-month seasonal components. The reliability of the forecast is confirmed by the calculation of the MAPE forecast error and Henry Theil's inequality coefficient. The article proposes an algorithm for calculating the relative indicators of the structure for the individual components of the reconstructed time series, identified through the singular spectral analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike their counterparts in developed markets, emerging-market firms are characterized by limited resources, including international experience and access to relevant information, which are essential for developing suitable international marketing strategy (IMS). Under such circumstances, strategies are expected to produce suboptimal results, especially when targeting competitive markets in advanced economies. Prior IMS research has largely focused on developed markets. In contrast, the authors examine IMS of exporters in Thailand, an emerging market. Despite major differences in environments and processes in emerging markets, they establish that Thai exporters that match their IMS to local market conditions realize superior performance, as predicated by strategy coalignment. The authors validate these results and discuss emerging-market firms' capacity to adapt their strategies and succeed in highly competitive advanced economies, despite relative inexperience, volatility, and information asymmetry at home. Exporting remains of critical importance to the economies of emerging markets, and the findings provide greater optimism for their firms' ability to address host-market conditions in their marketing strategies, as well as pointing to the competitive threat posed by these emerging-market neophytes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relatively little is known about pricing in the export business, particularly how to organize and implement export pricing within firms and how these issues affect export performance. Therefore, this study investigates antecedents of export performance, specifically the organizational aspects of export pricing and price adaptation and the moderating role of export market characteristics, including export market turbulence, enforcement of contracts, and corruption ranks of the export market. Using a large-scale survey sample of 295 exporting firms in Austria and Germany and secondary data on the export markets involved, the authors show that both the intensity of internal pricing coordination and price adaptation have a positive effect on export performance. Specifically, in highly turbulent export markets, the intensity of internal pricing coordination contributes to export performance. Furthermore, a high level of horizontal dispersion of pricing authority is advisable in countries in which the enforcement of contracts is difficult. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Economic History Research / Investigaciones de Historia Económica is the property of Asociacion Espanola de Historia Economica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We revisit the reliance of Canada on the US for its imports using new product-level data on the country of origin, the last exporting country, and the transport mode of Canadian imports. We not only show that the US is a key supplier of Canada, but also a key logistical hub: half of the imports from non-US suppliers enter Canada through the US. Therefore, 77 percent of Canadian imports are tied to the US through production or logistical linkages, well above the 55 percent usually reported in the public debate. We show that this reliance on the US is pervasive across most product categories and for Canada's main trade partners. We exploit this new measure of reliance on the US together with input-output tables to quantify the direct and indirect reliance of Canadian industries on the US through their input usage. For the average Canadian industry, the US-related content of its inputs reaches 24 percent. We finally discuss some of the policy implications of these results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the effects of the United States (U.S.) anti-dumping policy targeting China's steel products, based on the HS 10-digit code monthly data from 1995 to 2015. It shows that as soon as the U.S. government implemented the affirmative preliminary ruling of an anti-dumping case, the volume of Chinese exports to the U.S. decreased regardless of the outcome of the final ruling. In the meantime, the U.S. imports of the involved products from other competing countries increased. It further finds that China's exports of the impacted products were diverted to the third-party countries, most of which were developing countries. This finding is contrary to those of studies from other industries such as textiles and agricultural products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Czechoslovakia was the first industrialized economy to substantially increase tariffs after the First World War. At that time, Czechoslovakia was highly export-oriented, with a large trade surplus in industrial goods. We argue that the introduction of tariffs was a consequence of the ethnically heterogeneous structure of the economy. German capital controlled the highly export-oriented light and consumer goods industries; Czech capital dominated in industries that were far less export-oriented or even import-competing, such as machinery, transportation equipment, and electrical goods. Trade and exchange-rate policy preferences of both groups clearly differed; however, the policy decision-making process (at least until 1926) was completely controlled by Czechoslovaks and Czech capital, explicitly committed to a nationalist takeover of Czechoslovakia's economy. This is why it was possible to implement an exchange rate and trade policy that ran contrary to theoretical expectations based on the general (national aggregate) indicators of the national economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the European REACH regulation and its counterparts KKDIK in Turkey, UK REACH in Great Britain and K-REACH in Korea, importers are subject to the obligation to register all imported chemical substances, unless substances are exempted from this obligation. To enable importers to be exempted from these registration obligations, the respective regulations provide that non-domestic manufacturers and formulators can appoint a so-called Only Representative (OR), who registers the respective substances on behalf of the manufacturer/formulator and thus makes the respective importers so-called Downstream Users (DU). For this purpose, the OR must keep records of the respective importers as well as their annual imported substance quantities, which leads to problems in complex and multi-stage non-domestic supply chains, since indirect customers and suppliers as well as compositions of formulations are not known in many cases. Compliance with the OR's record keeping obligation would therefore only be possible by disclosing Confidential Business Information (CBI) in the supply chains, which may even be contrary to competition law rules if the OR is a related legal entity of the manufacturer/formulator. Therefore, in these cases, neither the manufacturers/formulators (represented by ORs) nor the importers can fulfil their obligations without disclosing such CBI and also risking loss of business. In the following article, a solution to this problem is presented using the example of EU REACH, which is also used in Turkey and Great Britain and works very well there. In Korea, the system is used in a slightly modified form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a consequence of the UK withdrawing from the European Union, it is becoming more difficult to comply with the labelling and safety data sheet (SDS) aspects of REACH and CLP. Such difficulties have also begun to shine a light on compliance in those areas more widely across the EU – regardless of the impact of Brexit. Correspondingly, authorities are ramping up enforcement across the EU and ECHA's Enforcement Forum is undertaking an enforcement project currently focusing on this area. Fortunately for duty holders in the EU and UK, and those exporting into those jurisdictions, the majority of the obligations are the same. Primary differences are due to legal entity changes – downstream users becoming importers, and the subsequent change this requires in legal entity details on labels and in SDS. What follows is an introduction to this issue, an outline of the obligations required in each jurisdiction, problems encountered when attempting to achieve compliance, and practical solutions to these problems. We hope that this document can be used to support your continued market access and minimise the chance of enforcement action against your business, and that of your customers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several existing studies have documented a negative relationship between firm financial constraint and export activities but do not attempt to examine factors that could attenuate this relationship in Africa. In this paper, we examine the effect of financial constraint on exports in Africa and explore how the level of trust in countries where firms are located shapes this relationship. We combine the World Bank Enterprise Surveys with different measures of country-level personal and interpersonal trust computed from the Afrobarometer surveys of 19 African countries. Our results show that financial constraints negatively affect export activities. However, this negative effect is attenuated for firms that are located in trust-intensive societies. These findings are robust to different specifications. Interestingly, we find that small and medium-sized enterprises in Africa are more likely to be affected by financial constraints but also more likely to benefit from a higher level of both personal and interpersonal trust, while for larger firms only interpersonal trust matters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is devoted to research of the impact of gradual liberalization of aviation market on the country's air transport industry development and on formation of external economic components of the country's GDP connected to it directly: export and import of air transport services. The study of the relationship between the operation indicators of air transport and formed external economic effects has been conducted using comparative, correlative and regression analysis based on the statistical data of Ukraine, which has its own air transport industry and is on the path of aviation liberalization. A strong dependence of the export of air transport services on the total number of international flights and its passengers was revealed. This determines the feasibility of tracking the external economic effects in the design of changes on directions and means of further development of country's air transport sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thomas Ellis, merchant of London, never expected he would be prosecuted for participating in one of the largest commercial frauds of his time. So when the Customs seized his brandy in 1731 he fought back. His case would influence parliamentary decision-making and reveal the extensive involvement of merchants in illicit trade. Ellis's argument that he was merely a 'fair trader' also illuminates the moral debate over smuggling during the period as governments sought to legitimize and enforce their trading rules and tariffs. Pressured by competition from professional smugglers and the revenue demands of the state, merchants responded by developing their own rules by which they could fairly compete. Ellis's story, and the 'Flemish scheme' it exposed, thereby shed light on the moral economy of early modern capitalism, the history of smuggling, and the dynamic of market ordering by increasingly assertive states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many SSA countries are low-Income countries with inadequate access to basic infrastructure including energy. According to IEA 2018, SSA has the least energy access rates globally. Thirteen countries in SSA, do not have up to 25% access, unlike developing Asia where there is only one country (World Bank, 2018). To this end, this empirical investigation focuses on the nexus between energy consumption and export performance of Sub-Sahara African countries. Generally, the study examines the contribution of energy consumption to real export of goods and services and specifically to the export of manufactured goods. This is very crucial as many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa heavily rely on the export of primary products. They trade on a small range of agricultural products and a small number of markets for their exports. To achieve this, Dumitrescu and Hurlin (2012) Granger causality procedure and Pooled Mean Group (PMG) were employed to determine the direction of causality and estimate the effect of energy consumption (renewable and non-renewable) on export performance. This estimation approach constrains the long run coefficients to be identical, but allows the short run coefficients and error variances to differ across groups. The estimated model in this study is constructed within the framework of multivariate panel analysis. Specifically, two models are specified with real export of goods and services and export of manufacturing goods as dependents variables. The study established that real export granger causes renewable energy, renewable energy, granger causes manufacturing export and manufacturing export granger causes non-renewable energy. More importantly, the study established the relative importance of renewable energy to export performance in SSA. The study, therefore, recommends that as sub-region is aspiring to move away from resource-based exports to manufacturing exports, it is critical that the countries in the region scale up access to energy and look more in the direction of renewable energy to bring this aspiration to reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urbanization plays a crucial role in the economic development of every country. The mutual relationship between the urbanization of any country and its economic productive structure is far from being understood. We analyzed the historical evolution of product exports for all countries using the World Trade Web with respect to patterns of urbanization from 1995 to 2010. Using the evolving framework of economic complexity, we reveal that a country's economic development in terms of its production and export of goods, is interwoven with the urbanization process during the early stages of its economic development and growth. Meanwhile in urbanized countries, the reciprocal relation between economic growth and urbanization fades away with respect to its later stages, becoming negligible for countries highly dependent on the export of resources where urbanization is not linked to any structural economic transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkey adopted an export-dependent growth strategy after the 1980 liberalization. In later years, with the impact of this strategy, Turkey's export structure and performance became a subject of investigation. Thus, when the export structure is evaluated, dependence of the export oriented industries on capital goods, intermediate goods, and energy is remarkable. Therefore, in this study, the development of import-based exports in Turkey between 1996:1 and 2018:4 was tested by the ARDL bound test method. As a result of the analyses, the effect of intermediate goods, capital goods, and energy imports, which have a higher amount of imports than other imported goods in the short and long term in Turkey, is noteworthy. Hence, the study is important and different from other studies in that it verifies the Turkey's industrial structure tending towards the assembly industry since its recent export structure has shown an import-oriented development and the share of imports of intermediate goods in its exports is high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to identify if the price of commodity exports influences the total exported and imported. It is considered the figures used by Aliceweb database MDIC, using annual data from the years 2000 to 2016. The data were analyzed for multiple regression. Of the explanatory variables, they presented a positive and significant relationship at the level of 5% only VPB and VPS, both in exports and also imports. It is concluded that the price of commodities have an influence on Brazilian exports and imports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first half of the fourteenth century, for various reasons connected to the international market, urban clothmakers in England underwent a steady transition from producing light coarse cheap woollens, known as worsteds, towards producing heavily finished full woollens. One of the main beneficiaries of this shift were the urban fullers, as their economic position considerably improved relative to other textile trades. This article examines the development of their craft, looking at individual fullers in urban areas. It demonstrates how urban fullers rose to prominence throughout the fourteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ryan Carlin and Timothy Hellwig challenge our claim that voters misattribute responsibility for economic performance in low-savings commodity-exporting (LSCE) countries of Latin America. They argue that we overlook incumbents' capacity to choose "policy regimes" that signal to voters their level of control the economy. They also claim that LSCE membership should be allowed to vary over time and that, even then, the concept is not useful to distinguish the impact of exogenous conditions on political outcomes. This article demonstrates that several implications of Carlin and Hellwig's alternative theory are not supported by the evidence, that their measure of policy regimes is endogenous to international conditions, and that even considering variation over time, Latin American countries remain clustered into the two original categories we proposed. We finish by showing that exogenous conditions affect presidential popularity in other LSCE countries and that the deviating case of Chile only reinforces our theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the transmission of changes in commodity prices to bank lending in a large sample of developing countries. A bank‐level analysis shows that a fall in commodity net export prices is associated with a reduction of bank lending, particularly for commodity exporters and during episodes of terms‐of‐trade decline. We complement this analysis with loan‐level data from a credit register, which allows us to identify the effect of a commodity price shock on the supply of credit, controlling for unobserved factors that could drive borrowers' credit demand. Results show that banks with relatively lower deposits and poor asset quality transmit the changes in commodity prices to lending more aggressively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been common to view the Icelandic economy either from the perspective of the individual farm in terms of its productivity or at the national scale in terms of trade and the role of imports/exports. Given the fact that the economy was largely a tenant-based system with a small number of landowners, there is an important middle ground between the household economics of individual farms and the state-sanctioned trade structures that needs to be explored. The objective of this paper is to examine this middle ground and the way the economy was structured in relation to property ownership and tenancy using the case study of the bishopric of Skálholt during the 17th and 18th centuries. Adopting a modified system of provision approach, three scales of analysis are adopted: the settlement itself, the immediate environs and finally the wider regional property network. Tracing the connections outward at successive scales reveals the complex nature of the economic infrastructure behind one of the largest landowners in Iceland at this time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the impacts of China's industrial plans on its exports and trade balance, and how they are magnified by the export controls to China by foreign countries. The empirical results show that China's policy support to key-industries through Five-Year Plans has had a significantly positive impact on its exports and trade balance. Specifically, this key-industry support policy has brought about a 0.35% increase in China's exports relative to imports since China's WTO accession, while this impact drops to 0.3% for the USA. Taking the foreign export controls into account, the impact of the key-industry support policy on China's trade surplus decreases significantly, which shows that the foreign export controls to China has magnified the impact of key-industry support policy on trade balance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With some exceptions, items imported into the United States from abroad have been required to bear a marking indicating their country of origin since the passage of the Tariff Act of 1890. Identification of a product's country of origin serves several purposes, including identifying the duty rate and applicability of certain tariffs. Most importantly for the purposes of this Article, a country of origin marking provides information to a consumer about an item's geographic origin at the time of sale so that a consumer can choose to base a purchasing decision on that information. The rise in the volume of e-commerce transactions within the United States, however, has created a gap between this intended purpose and the relevant statute and associated regulations. While the statute and regulations require only that a physical item be marked with its country of origin, the physical item in an e-commerce transaction is not available to the consumer until after the sale has been completed. Therefore, a consumer who cannot physically inspect an item at the point of sale cannot incorporate a product's country of origin into his or her purchasing decision. This Article examines whether the country of origin marking regulations administered by U.S. Customs and Border Protection should be amended to include a new requirement that a product's country of origin be disclosed at the online point of sale. This Article also identifies further areas of research that could be explored, including those which may be useful in determining the potential effectiveness of country of origin disclosures made at online points of sale, and considers available alternatives to the implementation of additional country of origin marking rules in the context of remote sales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The product composition of bilateral trade encapsulates complex relationships about comparative advantage, global production networks, and domestic politics. Despite the availability of product‐level trade data, most researchers rely on either the total volume of trade or certain sets of aggregated products. In this article, we develop a new dynamic clustering method to effectively summarize this massive amount of product‐level information. The proposed method classifies a set of dyads into several clusters based on their similarities in trade profile—the product composition of imports and exports—and captures the evolution of the resulting clusters over time. We apply this method to two billion observations of product‐level annual trade flows. We show how typical dyadic trade relationships evolve from sparse trade to interindustry trade and then to intra‐industry trade. Finally, we illustrate the critical roles of our trade profile measure in international relations research on trade competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Export performance has long been an issue of concern in the literature; however, there has been little research on managers' evaluations of their firms' performance in the presence of multiple export objectives. This study proposes a framework for understanding managerial assessments of export performance and illustrates its application using the analytic hierarchy process methodology. The framework explicitly acknowledges that the importance of different export objectives may differ both within and between firms and that the latter may also differ in terms of the frame of reference and/or time horizon used when assessing the attainment of objectives. Using this framework, the authors construct a composite index of assessed export performance that allows for valid interfirm comparisons. They use data from an online survey of 171 exporting firms to demonstrate the application of the framework and the assessed export performance index in an empirical setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to certain important gaps in existing knowledge of distribution channels in international markets, this paper reports an empirical study on the sources of power in cross-cultural buyer-seller relationships. Specifically, the focus of attention is an examination of the nature of and interrelations among the sources of power held by overseas distributors in their relationships with export manufacturers. The findings suggest than an overseas distributor's use of reward is positively related to its informational, referent, legitimate and expert power sources, as is perceived by export manufacturers. It has also been found that there is a negative relationship between an importer's use of coercion and its informational base of power over the exporter. Moreover, specific reward and punishment elements are identified that play an important role in influencing the pattern of interactions in manufacturer-overseas distributor relationships. The implications of these findings for business practitioners and public policy makers are discussed and directions for future research on the topic considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between initiating export stimuli and export performance is examined within the context of four specific types of export marketing strategies. The nature of the export stimulus is seen to be associated with performance for some types of strategy but not for all. Consequently, export marketing strategy acts as a moderator of the relationship between export stimuli and the performance of an export venture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Switzerland is usually not looked upon as a substantial economic actor in Africa. Taking Zambian copper as a case study, we show how important Swiss companies have become in the global commodities trade and the services it depends on. While big Swiss trading firms such as Glencore and Trafigura have generated increasing scholarly and public interest, a multitude of Swiss companies is involved in logistics and transport of Zambian copper. Swiss extractivism , we argue, is a model case for trends in today's global capitalism. We highlight that servicification , a crucial element of African mining regimes today, creates new and more flexible opportunities for international companies to capture value in global production networks. These opportunities partly rely on business-friendly regulation and tax regimes in Northern countries, a fact which makes companies potentially vulnerable to reputation risks and offers opportunities to civil society actors criticising their role. New and different Swiss–Zambian connections emerge from civil society networks organising around companies' economic activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY: The abundance of goods in the modern world has a tendency to prejudice interpretation of their value, but the way people value their goods is complex, relative and changeable — scarcity is just one factor. There is a long history of value theorization across the social sciences, but archaeological considerations of value remain uncommon and focused on prestige goods. In this paper, I review alternative conceptions of value through the lens of the modern world, with an example of Spode creamware used by a governor in the early decades of colonial Sydney. I argue that the process of devaluation, through discard and waste, offers a unique archaeological understanding of the shifting values people of the modern world placed on commodities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With some exceptions, items imported into the United States from abroad have been required to bear a marking indicating their country of origin since the passage of the Tariff Act of 1890. Identification of a product's country of origin serves several purposes, including identifying the duty rate and applicability of certain tariffs. Most importantly for the purposes of this Article, a country of origin marking provides information to a consumer about an item's geographic origin at the time of sale so that a consumer can choose to base a purchasing decision on that information. The rise in the volume of e-commerce transactions within the United States, however, has created a gap between this intended purpose and the relevant statute and associated regulations. While the statute and regulations require only that a physical item be marked with its country of origin, the physical item in an e-commerce transaction is not available to the consumer until after the sale has been completed. Therefore, a consumer who cannot physically inspect an item at the point of sale cannot incorporate a product's country of origin into his or her purchasing decision. This Article examines whether the country of origin marking regulations administered by U.S. Customs and Border Protection should be amended to include a new requirement that a product's country of origin be disclosed at the online point of sale. This Article also identifies further areas of research that could be explored, including those which may be useful in determining the potential effectiveness of country of origin disclosures made at online points of sale, and considers available alternatives to the implementation of additional country of origin marking rules in the context of remote sales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resumen: En las dos últimas décadas, el empleo sostenido por las exportaciones extracomunitarias de bienes y servicios ha crecido considerablemente en la UE, con un giro hacia el empleo sostenido por los servicios exportados como parte de productos manufacturados. Para estudiar este fenómeno, los autores descomponen totalmente los flujos comerciales de 40 países y 35 sectores durante el periodo 1995–2011 utilizando un modelo input‐output multirregional y la base de datos mundial input‐output (WIOD). Los resultados indican que los cuatro modos de suministro de servicios tradicionales del Acuerdo General sobre el Comercio de Servicios deberían revisarse para adecuarlos a la nueva realidad del comercio mundial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Framers of the U.S. Constitution adopted the Import-Export Clause to prohibit the states from interfering in international relations, to preserve import revenue for the federal government, and to ensure harmony between the states. The purposive inquiry established by Michelin and Washington Stevedoring is applied for all imports and exports except one category: export goods in transit. The pre-Michelin decision, Richfield Oil, provides complete constitutional tax immunity for export goods in transit. This island of constitutional tax immunity forces local taxpayers to subsidize exporters and foreign consumers and unfairly burdens coastal states with the regulatory, administrative, and environmental costs of shipping exports with no means to tax the beneficiaries of these services. This Note urges the Supreme Court to overturn Richfield Oil and apply the Michelin approach uniformly to import and export goods, in accordance with the text and purpose of the Import-Export Clause. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Spal: Revista de Prehistoria y Arqueologia de la Universidad de Sevilla is the property of Spal. Revista de Prehistoria y Arqueologia de la Universidad de Sevilla and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Many factors influence the convenience yield from holding physical stock (inventory) of soybeans. These include the actions of speculators and arbitrageurs, changing weather conditions and proximity to export and import parity. This study analyses the relationship between the convenience yield and two of the factors influencing Safex soybean futures prices - the daily ending stock (inventory) levels and the spot price - from 2007 to 2015. The first hypothesis tested is that the value of the convenience yield of a futures contract is high when the inventory level is low, based on the theory of storage. This hypothesis was tested, focusing on the three Safex hedging months (March, May and July). The second hypothesis is that a high convenience yield at the start of a contract's duration implies a high spot price towards the maturity of the contract. This hypothesis was tested using the three-, six- and nine-month periods to the May maturity, which is the most liquid Safex maturity. The results demonstrate that the convenience yield has a relationship with the stock level and the spot (cash) price, everything else being equal. Both hypotheses were thus accepted. Even though the South African soybean market is relatively small, the findings of this study are broadly in line with those of studies in overseas markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current era, international relations is essential to boost the country's economic growth. One of the activities that support it is the export-import (exim) trade activities. To conduct the activities successfully, the SMEs must understand the characteristics of targeted consumers and other matters related to technical implementation of international trade. This becomes an opportunity for the exim training services. There are two kinds of training services, namely, state-owned service and the private-owned ones. Participants have expectations for the trainings of providing the substantial materials. In addition, as service enterprises, participants can assess the quality of their services with SERVQUAL to analyze the gap between expectations and reality that they experience. For further enhancements, state-owned exim training services need to upgrade their competitiveness in order to be the main alternative for SMEs to participate in the exim trainings. By using gap analysis method, the service developments suggested in this would provide more focus on customers so that they can develop their capabilities during the trainings. This quantitative research was conducted by gathering primary data that were obtained by distributing questionnaires to 120 SMEs' CEOs and Exim Managers as participants of the exim trainings in East Java Province of Indonesia. The data were analyzed with SERVQUAL Gap Score. The score was simply acquired by calculating the customers' actual satisfaction deducted by customers' perceived expectation. This research used SERVQUAL dimensions to analyze the gaps that occurred within the indicators. It showed that two dimensions that did not need to be developed were the responsiveness and empathy. The gap in these dimensions was positive. Conversely, the remaining three dimensions that needed some service development were tangibles, reliability, and assurance. The results of this study would contribute to not only an exim training in Department of Trade and Commerce, but also management science, especially to the quality of other State-owned training services in other departments in Indonesia. Since the organization culture of state-owned and government-owned services is similar, this method could be used in wider areas of governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data collected from highly competitive markets in the Philippines were used to investigate how country-of-origin (CO) information influenced the prices set for a wide range of products. The data permitted direct comparisons between prices for the same product produced by the same company, but in different countries, and sold in adjacent markets. Imported products produced in more industrialized countries were found to command price premiums over the same product, produced by the same company in less industrialized countries. However, imports from all countries commanded significant price premiums over domestically produced products. Consistent with previous research, branding was found to moderate the effect of CO information on price. Finally, CO information had a stronger impact on price when product risk was high than when it was low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two apparently contradictory trends emerge from recent developments in marketing thinking--global marketing, and individual, or one-to-one, marketing relationships. Simultaneously, recent manufacturing developments have enabled firms to provide "mass customization," or products tailored to individual customer requirements. This article discusses these two issues, and suggests that they are the same phenomenon, viewed from two distinct disciplines. This raises serious questions about possible responses of Western companies to Japanese competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents an investigation of factors that stimulate the decision-making process of exporting firms from a European Lesser Developed Country (LDC) to continue and sustain export activities. The paper explores the existence of dimensions underlying export motivation and identifies potentially significant differences in perceptions of export stimuli based on firm size, degree of export involvement, and exporting experience. The findings point to a more proactive (than reactive) motivation structure underlying the export activities of these manufacturers. While no relationship is found between perceptions of export motivation and firm size, a number of significant differences in ongoing export stimuli are identified between different groups of firms in terms of export involvement and, to a lesser extent, exporting experience. Managerial and public policy implications are discussed, and suggestions for future research directions are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the causes of the ever-increasing U.S. trade deficit and says in large part the U.S. government is to blame for enacting restrictive laws that end up preventing American companies from exporting their goods. The article discusses legislation that was intended to increase exports but ended up doing the opposite such as the Sherman Antitrust Act; the Webb-Pomerene Act; the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act; and the anti boycott legislation incorporated in the Export Act. The U.S. policy of extending its laws to companies outside the borders has put American exports at a disadvantage in the world market. This disadvantage only further increases the debt of the country as more oil is imported and fewer items are exported.

The authors provide an initial test of the animosity model of foreign product purchase in the People's Republic of China. In contrast to Shimp and Sharma's (1987) CETSCALE, the model predicts that animosity toward a foreign nation will affect negatively the purchase of products produced by that country independently of judgments of product quality. The model was tested using mainland Chinese consumers' attitudes toward Japan and Japanese products. Structural equation modeling supports the model and shows that animosity has a significant impact on buying decisions above and beyond the effect of consumer ethnocentrism. Furthermore, these results were not cohort-specific. The measurement of cross-national hostility enables managers to understand better the purchase behavior of consumers in the international marketplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]