This book analyzes China's development in the wider context of the global trade, investment, security, knowledge and production regimes established by the United States. It argues that, although China has thus far been able to enjoy rapid growth within this global architecture, it will have to deal with a more challenging external environment as other states react to its rise. More specifically, it is facing growing pressure to realign its currency, a greater number of trade investment and intellectual property disputes, a more hostile security environment, and exclusionary regional trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic trade agreements. It is also being confronted by an array of internal issues, from an ageing population and weaknesses in the high tech sector, to over-reliance on foreign companies for exports, non-performing loans and a burgeoning state debt. This, in turn, has led an increasing number of firms to relocate to other countries. For the time being, the author concludes, China's global ambitions and challenge to US supremacy will have to be scaled back. This insightful work will appeal to students and scholars of China's politics, economy and development.

This book examines why and how small powers link their security interests and trade agendas, and how security threats influence the facilitation and outcome of their trade activities. In doing so, it analyses the increasingly complex connections between trade and security, demonstrating how these linkages affect the overall security of four small but important states in East Asia. Focusing on the role of high levels of internal and external insecurities, marginal geo-economic size and peripheral geopolitical position, and multidimensional and multidirectional security contexts and threats, the author concludes that for every security enhancement that a linkage creates a consequent security risk is generated. In other words, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines are effectively trading their security. This innovative book will appeal to political scientists, economists, and security and trade experts.

This book addresses the lack of binding multi-lateral international agreement on cartels, through analysis of trials and failures. It also suggests strategic approaches to overcome current standstills. In addition, the book contrasts international agreement on cartels with inter-governmental commodity agreement which has been developed separately through international law. Through this project, the author puts forth that successful international law on cartels needs to reflect the interests and arguments of developing countries.

This book presents a theoretical investigation of the formation of regional free trade agreements (FTAs), the behavior of global enterprises, and government trade policies in various game forms including multi-stage games, repeated games, and timing games. In the last few decades, the number of FTAs has been rapidly increasing in the world, especially in Asia. In particular, East Asian countries are expected to be main engines for sustaining the world economy. Focusing on East Asian economies, strategic behaviors of governments and firms in order to attain their own aims are examined. The analytical methods employed in this book are those currently being developed or that recently have been created. The topics are important contemporary issues in regional areas facing the rapid economic changes brought about by globalization. Most chapters of this book are based on original work that was published in international journals but now has been completely rewritten, with restructuring and extension of the original work. This book, with its up-to-date information, will be of interest to academic researchers in universities and economic research institutions and to students working on advanced degrees in economics.

This anthology is an attempt to make sense of conferences and trade fairs as phenomena in contemporary society. The authors describe how these large-scale professional gatherings have become key sites for making and negotiating both industries and individual professions. In fact, during the past few decades, conferences and trade fairs have become a significant global industry in their own right. The editors assert that large-scale professional gatherings are remarkable events that require deeper analysis and scholarly attention.

This book assesses the 2008-2009 financial crisis and its ramifications for the global economy from a multidisciplinary perspective. Current market conditions and systemic issues pose a risk to financial stability and sustained market access for emerging market borrowers. The volatile environment in the financial system became the source of major threats and some opportunities such as takeovers, mergers and acquisitions for international business operations. This volume is divided into six sections. The first evaluates the 2008-2009 Global Financial Crisis and its impacts on Global Economic Activity, examining the financial crisis in historical context, the economic slowdown, transmission of the crisis from advanced economies to emerging markets, and spillovers. The second section evaluates global imbalances, especially financial instability and the economic outlook for selected regional economies, while the third focuses on international financial institutions and fiscal policy applications. The fourth section analyzes the capital market mechanism, price fluctuations and global trade activity, while the fifth builds on new trends and business cycles to derive effective strategies and solutions for international entrepreneurship and business. In closing, the final section explores the road to economic recovery and stability by assessing the current outlook and fiscal strategies.

This book addresses concerns with the international trade and investment dispute settlement systems from a statist perspective, at a time when multilateralism is deeply questioned by the forces of mega-regionalism and political and economic contestation. In covering recent case law and theoretical discussions, the book's contributors analyze the particularities of statehood and the limitations of the dispute settlement systems to judge sovereign actors as autonomous regulators. From a democratic deficit coupled with a deficit of legitimacy in relation to the questionable professionalism, independence and impartiality of adjudicators to the lack of consistency of decisions challenging essential public policies, trade and investment disputes have proven controversial. These challenges call for a rethinking of why, how and what for, are States judged. Based on a "sovereignty modern" approach, which takes into account the latest evolutions of a globalized trade and investment law struggling to put people's expectations at its core, the book provides a comprehensive framework and truly original perspective linking the various facets of "judicial activity" to the specific yet encompassing character of international law and the rule of law in international society. In doing so, it covers a large variety of issues such as global judicial capacity building and judicial professionalism from an international and domestic comparative angle, trade liberalisation and States' legitimate rights and expectations to protect societal values, the legal challenges of being a State claimant, the uses and misuses of imported legal concepts and principles in multidisciplinary adjudications and, lastly, the need to reunify international law on a (human) rights based approach.

This book traces the development and analyses the performance of life insurance industry in India, since inception of this sector, using different business indicators over the years. It discusses the evolution and changing features of the Indian insurance industry in 3 phases: phase I from 1818 to 1956, phase II from 1956 to 2000 (known as the nationalisation period) and phase III post 2000 (called the post reform period). The book also measures the relative efficiency and productivity of the life insurance industry in India for the post-reform period, by employing Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Despite the fact that the life insurance sector recorded a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17% in terms of total premiums and 21% in terms of new business premium collections during the post reform period, the insurers continue to grapple with the issue of profitability. Against this background, the book presents results on the factors determining profitability of the life insurance companies using measures of efficiency and competition. By helping regulatory authorities determine the future course of action in the context of entry of foreign insurers and also in establishing a level playing field, the book has important policy implications.

New digital devices enable consumers to ubiquitously access the Internet and inspire them to switch between online and offline channels when shopping - a phenomenon extant research on consumer behavior terms cross-channel shopping. This considerable change in consumer behavior offers great potential for retailers worldwide to strengthen their competitiveness. Today, retail incumbents aspire to integrate their channels to offer compelling switching opportunities among all online and offline channels - an approach we coin cross-channel management. However, addressing cross-channel shoppers may entail a rise in business model complexity which can only be tackled by installing a firm-wide strategic change process. Set against this transformative background, this book offers insight into how firms can overcome said inertia and successfully transform their current channel specific business model to a much more integrated system of online and offline channels. With the help of 71 interviews with top and middle managers in retailing, this book derives a variety of recommendations in the field of cross-channel management for retailers and manufacturers.

Almost weekly, the news is full of stories about disappearing retail chains. From House of Fraser and BHS to Toys'R'Us and Sears, recognised names are vanishing overnight - as such large organizations disappear, so the malls, shopping centres, high streets and main streets become emptier and less appealing to visit. No name is safe: in September 2019, Marks & Spencer lost its place in the FTSE100 Index - a sign of just how far its fortunes have fallen.

But the retail sector remains hugely important in terms of job numbers: in the US, it employs around 30 million people (directly and indirectly); in the UK, around 10 million. As such, anything that jeopardises the retail sector will have a deep and lasting impact on millions of lives, as well as on public policy. While many blame the 'Amazon effect', this is an oversimplification. Deeper forces are at work that are changing people's relationships with brands, the balance of power between producers and consumers, and the whole nature of the supply chain that has existed since the industrial revolution.

Retail Therapy offers a comprehensive analysis of these forces and their impact on the world of retailing. More importantly, it presents a cogent analysis of the longer term trends that are shaping retailing, and outlines a clear road map for sustainable success in the future.

Revenue Management bezeichnet ein - vor allem in der Dienstleistungs- und Sachguterindustrie - eingesetztes Konzept zur effektiven Nutzung unflexibler Kapazitaten. Ziel ist es, diese Kapazitaten in einem begrenzten Zeitraum moeglichst effizient und gewinnoptimierend zu nutzen. Im operativen Bereich fuhrt dies jedoch dazu, dass Unternehmen verschiedenen Kunden dieselbe Leistung zu unterschiedlichen Preisen anbieten (z. B. Luftfahrtindustrie, Hotellerie). Vielen Kunden gibt dies Anlass zur Unzufriedenheit. Vor diesem Hintergrund betrachten Experten aus Wissenschaft und Praxis Revenue Management aus der Perspektive des Kunden. Sie zeigen Erklarungsansatze fur die kundenseitige Wahrnehmung und Reaktionen auf Revenue-Management-Praktiken auf und stellen Konfliktloesungsstrategien vor. Ein unverzichtbares Marketing-Handwerkszeug fur ein professionell betriebenes Revenue Management.

The book provides an analysis of the grocery retail market in a very large number of countries with an international report written by an economist. The second part of the book offers the analysis of liability issues in relation to non-compliance with CSRs with an international report by a British barrister. Both topics are very timely.

This book investigates the less-explored dimensions of how industries in different Indian subnational spaces or states have responded to the growing phenomenon of internationalization. What factors have influenced firms participating in global business? Have state (both central and provincial) policies acted as catalyst for local firms? Not only does this study delve into these issues; it also painstakingly develops a comprehensive database that remains unique in the absence of reliable official statistics on this subject to date. Efforts have been made to establish a reasonably consistent dataset for the period 1990-2008 derived from the CMIE-PROWESS database. Care has been taken to condense the data and classify it by sector, location, size and ownership. The study delineates export patterns by firm and state and explores factors influencing export decisions according to sector, size and location. A further interesting aspect is the book's critical examination of industrial and trade promotion policies at the state/regional level that might have contributed to or hindered exporting by firms. The states considered for detailed policy discussions are highly diverse and include Gujarat, Odisha and Karnataka. To address the glaring absence of literature on the role of subnational factors in enterprises' export performance, a preliminary state-by-state analysis of the spatial determinants of firms' export activities is also provided.

This book offers a collection of studies on regional integration and the dynamic business environment in East Asia. The papers included, originally presented at the 2014 Asia Pacific Business Conference on "Free Trade Agreements and Regional Integration in East Asia," examine the challenges and dynamics in the increasingly integrated East Asian markets and outline a new paradigm for doing international business in the region. The papers address diverse areas related to regional integration, financial markets, investment, trade and capital flow, sustainability, accounting and auditing issues, exchange rates, strategies and the regional business environment. The book provides a valuable resource for practitioners, policy-makers and students who are interested in understanding the vibrant aspects of business in today's East Asia.

This book explains China’s intellectual property perspective in the context of European theories, through a critical examination of intellectual property theory and practice focused on China’s compliance with the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The author’s critical review of contemporary intellectual property philosophy suggests that justifying intellectual property protection through Locke or Hegel’s property theories internalizes a theoretical paradox. “Professor Wenwei Guan’s treatment of intellectual property law and practice in the PRC offers new perspectives that enrich an already active field of study . . . This book will be a useful contribution to academic and policy discourses examining conceptual and operational dimensions of China’s intellectual property protection system and the broader process of China’s international engagement.” – Dr. Pitman B. Potter, Professor of Law, University of British Columbia, Canada “Dr. Guan reminds us of the daunting challenge of the public-private divide in forming and reforming TRIPS regime; how this regime has failed to address development needs and public concerns in developing countries like China; and how TRIPS’s ‘birth defect’ can be overcome and its evolution can be put back on the right track.” – Dr. Yahong Li, Associate Professor at Faculty of Law, Hong Kong University

Julia Weindel provides novel implications for researchers and managers by first identifying the sector-specific main levers of retail brand equity. Second, she shows that retail brand equity and perceived value have a reciprocal relationship. The author analyzes which one of these has stronger effects on loyalty. Third, she addresses the interdependencies between brand beliefs, retail brand equity, and loyalty within multichannel retail structures. The study is forced through the knowledge that management of retail brands is highly valuable for scholars and managers, because retail brand equity is known to strongly influence consumer behavior in various contexts. The retail brand represents a valuable asset for retailers which need to know the levers of retail brand equity.

This book addresses topical development issues in India, ranging from land acquisition, poverty alleviation programs, labor market issues, the public-private partnership (PPP) model and fiscal federalism. It offers an Indian perspective on the dynamics of economic development and the impact the country's legal and public policies have on it. Economic development is a dynamic concept - old problems are solved, while at the same time new issues come to the fore. The emergence of these issues is unique to the development experience of an economy. The book includes sixteen recent contributions and is divided into four sections: law and contract; trade and foreign aid; issues in public economics; and the social sector and poverty alleviation. The chapters reflect on a number of development issues which were of concern for India in the recent past and will be important in her future development initiatives such as land acquisition, agricultural productivity, employment, protection of intellectual property rights, corruption, public-private partnership, regional development, poverty alleviations programs like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and the training of self-help group members, health and education of women, to name a few. The book is a valuable reference resource for policy practitioners and researchers working on the economics of development with special focus on developing economies.

Coping with Retail Giants critically analyzes the modern retail market and identifies how businesses gain the competitive edge over the major retailers that currently control the market. Dr. Samli argues that as society advances economically, consumers will seek better values generated by the retailing sector.

American business is dysfunctional. Companies of all sizes follow the mistaken belief that their products and services are best sold through mega-customers with pervasive market reach, such as Amazon and Walmart. Far too many business leaders fail to realize-until it is too late-that the relentless pursuit of volume at all cost is not the key to long-term profits and success. The Customer Trap: How to Avoid the Biggest Mistake in Business is Thomas and Wilkinson's sequel to The Distribution Trap: Keeping Your Innovations from Becoming Commodities, which won the Berry-American Marketing Association Prize for the best marketing book of 2010. The Distribution Trap contended that cracking the big-box channel is not necessarily the Holy Grail that many marketers assume it is. The Customer Trap takes this thesis to the next level by arguing that all companies, regardless of the industry there are in, should maintain control over their sales and distribution channels. Volume forgone by avoiding the mass market is more than offset by higher margins and stronger brand equity. The Customer Trap shows that giving power to a customer who violates "the ten percent rule" sets a company up for ruin. Yet, when presented with the opportunity to push more sales through large customers, most decision-makers jump at the chance. As a result, marketing has come to resemble a relentless quest for efficiency and scale. Demands from mega-customers in the form of discounts, deals, and incentives erode the integrity of the brand and what it originally stood for. Lower margins become the norm and cost-saving compromises on quality take over. In time, the brand suffers and, in some cases, fails outright. Stark examples from Oreck Vacuum Cleaners, Rubbermaid, Goodyear, Levi's, and others illustrate the perils of falling into the "customer trap." This book demonstrates in vivid detail how to thrive by controlling your sales and distribution. The authors show how many firms, such as STIHL Inc., etailz, Apple, Red Ant Pants, and Columbia Paints & Coatings, have prospered by avoiding the "customer trap"-and how your company can have similar success.

This book addresses the challenging task of demand forecasting and inventory management in retailing. It analyzes how information from point-of-sale scanner systems can be used to improve inventory decisions, and develops a data-driven approach that integrates demand forecasting and inventory management for perishable products, while taking unobservable lost sales and substitution into account in out-of-stock situations. Using linear programming, a new inventory function that reflects the causal relationship between demand and external factors such as price and weather is proposed. The book subsequently demonstrates the benefits of this new approach in numerical studies that utilize real data collected at a large European retail chain. Furthermore, the book derives an optimal inventory policy for a multi-product setting in which the decision-maker faces an aggregated service level target, and analyzes whether the decision-maker is subject to behavioral biases based on real data for bakery products.

Examining the extent to which trade adversely affects domestic workers, Making Sense of Anti-Trade Sentiment documents statistical relationships between exports and imports and domestic employment/wages.

Uncovering how cash-in-hand economies are composed of not only the underground sector (work akin to formal employment conducted for profit-motivated purposes), but also a hidden economy of favours more akin to mutual aid, this book displays the need to transcend conventional market-oriented readings of cash-in-hand work and radically rethink whether seeking its eradication through tougher regulations is always appropriate. It argues for a variegated policy approach that recognizes these two distinct forms of cash-in-hand work and which tailors policy accordingly.

Based on extensive archival research, Beyond Market and Hierarchy reconstructs how Fan waged modern China's war of salts. Led by his Jiuda Salt Industries, the nascent refined salt industry battled revenue farmers who, as a group, monopolized the production and distribution of evaporated salt.

China's trade surplus is an essential question, but there are many popular misconceptions about it, a fact that prompted the creation of this book, On China's Trade Surplus. It will help readers to understand the manner in which China's foreign trade and China's role in global trade have developed, and to how to benefit from trade with China. In this book, many hot topics are analyzed, such as: What promotes China's trade surplus? Why doesn't it have a trade deficit? What are the relations between trade frictions and China's trade surplus, and how can trade frictions be reduced? What is the deeper meaning of the U.S. trade deficit with China?

BE 2002 is the second in a series of conferences on eCommerce, eBusiness, and eGovemment organised by the three IFIP committees TC6, TC8, and TCll. As BE 2001 did last year in Zurich, BE 2002 continues to provide a forum for users, engineers, and researchers from academia, industry and government to present their latest findings in eCommerce, eBusiness, and eGovernment applications and the underlying technologies which support those applications. This year's conference comprises a main track with sessions on eGovernment, Trust, eMarkets, Fraud and Security, eBusiness (both B2B and B2C), the Design of systems, eLearning, Public and Health Systems, Web Design, and the Applications of and Procedures for eCommerce and eBusiness, as well as two associated Workshops (not included in these proceedings): eBusiness Models in the Digital Online Music and Online News Sectors; and eBusiness Standardisation - Challenges and Solutions for the Networked Economy. The 47 papers accepted for presentation in these sessions and published in this book of proceedings were selected from 80 submissions. They were rigorously reviewed (all papers were double-blind refereed) before being selected by the International Programme Committee. This rejection rate of almost 50% indicates just how seriously the Committee took its quality control activities.