The Maritime Silk Road foregrounds the numerous networks that have been woven across oceanic geographies, tying world regions together often far more extensively than land-based routes. On the strength of the new data which has emerged in the last two decades in the form of archaeological findings, as well as new techniques such as GIS modelling, the authors collectively demonstrate the existence of a very early global maritime trade. From architecture to cuisine, and language to clothing, evidence points to early connections both within Asia and between Asia and other continents-well before European explorations of the Global South. The human stories presented here offer insights into both the extent and limits of this global exchange, showing how goods and people travelled vast distances, how they were embedded in regional networks, and how local cultures were shaped as a result.

Business firms are currently being forced to make a variety of changes to respond to both threats and opportunities in the international economy. This volume examines in detail the many ways successful companies establish a presence in overseas markets. The authors classify operations in the international environment into four categories. First, companies that do not want to actually establish local production facilities can export directly to targeted markets or engage in turnkey operations. Historically, this has been one of the most important means of acquiring international markets and continues to be a viable strategy today. Second, establishing contractual relationships with foreign companies is effective when a firm does not want to operate a wholly earned subsidy. Third, operating wholly owned facilities in other nations is one of the most preferred methods of gaining and maintaining a presence overseas. Firms typically employ this strategy either by building new facilities or by merging with or acquiring existing companies. The authors demonstrate how the approach used by business depends on the nature of the obstacles a host government places before foreign commerce.

Dr. Hines draws on her own extensive worldwide research and her consultations with major multinational corporations to provide a comprehensive, detailed study of the rationale underlying the emergence of global private power, ways to find opportunities for further development within the global private power business, and alternative methods and techniques for its development and finance. Her book shows that, with assistance from bilateral and multilateral government agencies such as the International Finance Corporation and the various national export-import banks, project debt ratios resonably low. Equity is usually contributed to the project by all the major participants. Global competition for viable power projects is tending to reduce costs and increase plant efficiencies. This work is a major contribution to our understanding of what global power privatization is, where it is being implemented and how it is done, and the various considerations that energy executives and public policymakers worldwide should keep in mind when they seek financing for their private power projects.

Global power plant development commonly starts with regional and country risk analysis as the developer views alternative opportunities and compiles a prospectus for potential investors. As the developer analyzes the financial, market, operating, resource, political, and other risks, he or she usually considers possible methods of risk mitigation. With the participation of key host and home country and foreign partners, the developer selects the new location, the type of power plant and necessary equipment for the desired output, the fuel types and sources, the potential customers, the private financing methods, and the possibility of financial guarantees from the host government and bilateral and multilateral organizations. The markets of Asia, Latin America, and Europe present unusually good opportunities at the turn of the new century.

Gale explains why international negotiations have not produced a sustainable solution to tropical rainforest degradation. Using an innovative, critical approach to international regimes, the author analyzes the structure and operation of the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO). He shows how the timber industry and producing- and consuming-country governments created a blocking alliance that favoured developmentalist interests and ideas. The ITTO bolstered this alliance by permitting environmentalists merely to voice, but not to negotiate, their concerns.

This book examines the high technology trade beteen Britain, France, West Germany, Japan, and the oil-producing states of the Middle East. Claiming that the economies of the Middle East are undergoing transformations resulting in constantly changing technological needs, the authors argue that supplier states will have to be able to adapt to those needs if they hope to outdistance their competitors.

Middlemen in international markets are one of the most critical components of firms' international marketing strategy. They constitute the main link between the exporter and the local market, and are thereby the "extended arm" of the exporter organisation. This volume of AIM analyses different aspects of relations between exporters and their middlemen: selection and governance, information exchange and learning, cultural aspects and finally the dynamics of such relations. The volume should be seen as a continuation of a stream of literature that has emerged over the last five to ten years.

This volume is more concerned with the phenomena under study than with casting light on one particular theoretical perspective. The contributions represented here are therefore drawing on a number of different theoretical streams: agency theory, transaction cost economics, network theory, economic sociology, resource base theory and its applied "offspring," Internationalisation Process school of thought. It features researchers from universities in nine different countries, representing both well-established and young academicians. This is a manifest indication of the importance of this field of research.

The book is an invaluable asset to students both at the graduate and doctoral levels, and should be a must for researchers in this particular field. Also practitioners will find this book stimulating in their quest for improvements to their relations with their foreign middlemen.

Port Management brings together a collection of seminal papers from Palgrave's journal Maritime Economics and Logistics. It is a dynamic volume, containing contributions from leading authors with different disciplinary backgrounds, representing a vast regional diversity. The volume provides authoritative and timely investigations into key topics in port economics, including research on: global supply chains, port networks, choice modelling, port infrastructure, competition, port pricing, efficiency in European seaports, and an analysis of Chinese container ports. It is essential reading for professionals, scholars, and researchers interested in port economics.

In Submarine Telegraphy and the Hunt for Gutta Percha, Helen Godfrey traces the connections between submarine telegraphy and the peoples of Singapore and Sarawak (Borneo) who supplied 'gutta percha', the latex insulating the world network of undersea telegraph cables. The book examines the complex inter-relationships linking metropolitan and local environments in a trade once described as a matter of interest to the whole civilized world. Using previously untapped corporate and official archives, trade data and a rich documentary record, the study explores the roles of cable producers, scientists, administrators, and local Chinese and indigenous traders. It reveals how a global trade may transcend technological, geographic and cross-cultural challenges, even hostilities. Motivations and outcomes are more complex than simple commercial gain.

Northern Laos has become a prominent spot in large-scale, top-down mappings and studies of neoliberal globalisation and infrastructural development linking Thailand and China, and markets further beyond. Yet in the common narrative, in which Laos appears as a weak victim helplessly exposed to its larger neighbours, attention is seldom paid to local voices. This book fills this gap. Building on long-term multi-sited fieldwork, it accompanies northern Lao cross-border traders closely in their transnational worlds of mobilities, social relations, economic experimentation and aspiration. Cross-Border Traders in Northern Laos: Mastering Smallness demonstrates that these traders' indispensable but often invisible role in the everyday workings of the China-Laos-Thailand borderland economy relies on their rhetoric and practices of 'smallness'-of framing their transnational trade activities in a self-deprecating manner and stressing their economic inferiority. Decoding their discursive surface of insignificance, this ethnography of 'smallness' foregrounds remarkable transnational social and economic skills that are mostly invisible in Sino-Southeast Asian borderland scholarship.

Examining how leading developing countries are increasingly shaping international economic negotiations, this book uses the case studies of India and South Africa to demonstrate the ability of states to exert diplomatic influence through different bargaining strategies and represent the interests of the developing world in global governance.

The eighteenth century is often viewed as the heroic age of the British iron industry - a time of triumphant technological progress. In fact, it was an age of thwarted ambition, when the take-up of new technologies proved frustratingly slow. The eighteenth century was more accurately the age of Baltic iron. Swedish and Russian iron surged onto the British market, meeting the demand that British ironmasters could not satisfy. This was of epochal importance: Swedish iron allowed British steel makers and hardware manufacturers to dominate Atlantic markets. In turn, the rhythms of Atlantic commerce resounded through peasant communities in Sweden. "Baltic iron in the Atlantic world" captures this moment. In doing so it internationalises Swedish history in a radical way and presses an oceanic perspective on the traditionally insular view of the rise of heavy industry in Britain.

The Asia-Pacific region has emerged as a dominant player in trade and will continue to be an influential pole of world trade and economics, with the center of gravity shifting to this region. This book presents analytical insights into the various regional and bilateral trade agreements (RTAs) and their beneficial effects on bilateral trade and development. It provides an incisive analysis and a roundup of all major RTAs and also presents an overview of all major agreements between the countries involved, which might propel their trade flows and influence future economic engagements.The book in a novel way also discusses possible obstacles that are encountered during the implementation of RTAs and circumvention routes, once those taken into account could ensure the successful execution of the agreements. The book dwells on the issue of regionalism and multilateralism with reference to General Agreements on Trade and Tariffs and World Trade Organisation, which have revolutionized the trade dynamics by opening up new areas of trade-rules and formulating specific policy guidelines for the member countries to adhere to during trade negotiations. The book also provides new insights into some of the issues of negotiations such as sensitive lists, trade and investment cooperation, including trade in services, rules of origin, non-tariff barriers, anti-dumping etc. The book also focuses on policy instruments that could convert trade gains to development gains. The existing economic cooperation arrangements in the region as well as those that are at various stages of study and negotiations, empirical insights and policy suggestions are elucidated in detail.

In this timely volume, the ongoing, dramatic economic and geopolitical changes in NAFTA and the European Union are examined. Gianaris pays particular attention to the potential for stronger economic cooperation between North America and Western Europe. This unique book deals with similarities in economic organizations and related fiscal and monetary policies as they affect trade and financial transactions between these regions, and provides a detailed examination of trade and investment relations, capital flows, and currency realignments as well as transatlantic joint ventures. In addition, it deals with problems of privatization, employee participation, closer integration, and the challenge of enlarging NAFTA to include other Latin American countries and the European Union to include Eastern Europe. Gianaris weaves together a historical framework with comparative studies of the nation-states of NAFTA and the European Union. He discusses structural changes and the main problems and developments in the relationships between NAFTA and the European Union as well as problems of mutual trade, investments, and joint ventures. A useful book for students, scholars, and investors with a broad range of interests in the American and European continents.

This book provides one of the first interdisciplinary reviews of the relationship between services, globalisation and trade liberalisation as we enter the twenty-first century. Written by academics and policymakers, it contains a detailed analysis of the characteristics of service trade and of recent and current service trade negotiations. The authors focus on exploring the complex relationship between the process of globalisation and the globalisation of services taking into consideration service trade negotiations. Many service functions reduce the relative distance between places and more importantly enable the process of globalisation. The globalisation of service functions is complex. Services are different from goods as they depend on human capital (embodied knowledge and reputations) and have to be localized to meet specific cultural and political requirements. The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) needs to be informed by an understanding of the differences that exist between goods and services as well as by the processes by which services globalise. The GATS has to be more than just about quantitative-based policies but also has to explore national regulations that inhibit trade in services. This book will be of special interest to economists, geographers and policymakers with a specific involvement in service trade and trade liberalization.

The concepts of innovation and export are traditionally considered in isolation, both within companies and within the support organizations dedicated to them. As a result, within this broad research field, very little academic work has focused on how to implement their relationship at an operational level. This book proposes a joint diagnostic tool for SMEs, highlighting good practices to be mastered in order to simultaneously improve innovation and export performance, in the form of a virtuous circle. Innovation and Export focuses on the integration of innovation and export into the strategic management of SMEs, for which the use of synergies is a powerful lever to overcome any difficulties in mobilizing significant resources.

The European Union (EU) has now become the largest trade partner of China. While the Sino-US trade relations and particularly the high-profile trade disputes between the US and China get considerable academic attention for geopolitical reasons, very few researches have been done on the Sino-EU trade disputes that gradually loom large on the horizon. This book delves into the trade disputes between China and the EU and identifies the causes for trade disputes. It examines how the disputes will shape the China-EU trade relations, and offers a macro overview on how the issues can be resolved or at least how they should be managed.

This timely book sheds light on the Sino-EU trade disputes thus putting it in global perspective and enriches the literature in this regard.

Country's affairs are greatly impacted by shifts in government; thus, the availability of research on current happenings within governmental policy and relations is imperative to keep citizens informed. Uncertainties and Risk Assessment in Trade Relations presents an innovative examination of the ambiguities of foreign importing and exporting and its impact on governmental aspects such as global relations and financial stability. Featuring coverage on a range of topics including border adjustment, tax reforms, and liquidity regulation, this publication is targeted towards academicians, researchers, and students interested in the recent happenings and opinions of international trade.

Although the Pacific islands were front-page news during the 1941-1945 Pacific War, today they are seldom in the American consciousness--except as a perception of Micheneresque tropical paradises. But the islands--10,000 strong and scattered over nearly one-fifth of the earth's surface--still straddle or remain close to the sea and air lanes that link the United States with Australia and Asia, and carry nearly one-half of U.S. foreign trade. New political interests also exist with the recent emergence of a new panoply of independent Pacific island states, extension of U.S. sovereignty to other Pacific islands, and new defense responsibilities in several states linked to the United States by free association. John C. Dorrance offers an exceptionally authoritative and comprehensive assessment of U.S. interests in and policy toward a poorly understood region. The islands, highly aid dependent and uniquely vulnerable to external influences, have experienced insurrections, military coups, secessionist rebellion, political assassinations, Soviet in-roads, and even Libyan mischief-making. Ethnic conflict and developmental problems also threaten democratic institutions and the region's stability. Dorrance thoroughly explores the regional policy environment and the issues that face the United States. His book is of lasting value to scholars and especially to policy-makers and practitioners.

Human Capital, Trade and Public Policy in Rapidly Growing Economies argues that only two centuries ago, no society had ever enjoyed sustained growth in living standards. The contributors to this book aim to discover why the world today exhibits a predilection for perpetual self-improvement.In particular, the book focuses on the forces underlying long-lasting growth in East Asia's Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs). Drawing from the experiences of Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan, it questions whether public policy can contribute to removing barriers towards accumulation of wealth, and if so, what development policy should be put in place to remedy the existing distortions or market failure problems. Theoretical and empirical analyses are also used to broach other important issues, such as: Why do some economies experience growth while others decline? What are the major determinants of long-term growth and development? Is human capital the main driving force? Does international trade play a crucial role? This book will appeal to those with an interest in development and public policy.

The world of trade is changing rapidly, from the 'rise of the South' to the growth of unconventional projects like fair trade and carbon trading. Beyond Free Trade advances alternative ways for understanding these new dynamics, based on historical, political, or sociological methods that go beyond the limitations of conventional trade economics.

Economic globalisation and technological change are the two issues that concerned people in the past, concern them today and will concern them in the future - all over the world, poor or rich. Traditionally, questions about allocative effects are asked: What are the labour market implications? Who loses? Who wins? What is the net aggregate welfare effect after an adjustment period? However, two points are rarely taken into consideration: How do globalisation and technological change interact and what are the potential long-run implications for economic growth? This book addresses the interplay of these megatrends. It asks how economic globalisation may affect innovation and technology of individual firms and eventually the growth prospects of countries. Thereby it shows that protectionism not only harms static efficiency but might as well lead to dynamic losses. The book provides a systematic overview of the theoretical underpinnings of the openness-growth nexus and summarises the conceptual problems and important findings of the empirical analyses so far. The theoretical insights are supported by two empirical studies, the first dealing with the innovative behaviour and the "within-multinational" technology transfer of Spanish firms that were acquired by foreign companies and the second analysing productivity growth rate implications from exporting for German manufacturing firms.

This volume examines one of the major systemic changes in world economic history: the economic transformation in the Central European nations and the former Soviet states. Part I considers the dramatic adjustments in commodity structure and the geographic distribution of trade in these countries, while Part II surveys the sweeping transition of the Central and Eastern European countries' payments systems and the evolution of financial markets, exchange rates, and banking systems. Forms of integration with the global economy and proposed requirements for accession to the European Union are considered in Part III, and Part IV presents a model evaluating the record of structural adjustments in these transforming economies. The economic transformation in Central and Eastern Europe has been one of the major systemic changes in world economic history. This volume examines the dramatic changes in trade and payment systems in Central European nations and the former Soviet states during the first half of the 1990s. Part I considers the dramatic adjustments in commodity structure and the geographic distribution of trade in these countries, while Part II surveys the sweeping transition of the Central and Eastern European countries' payments systems and the evolution of financial markets, exchange rates, and banking systems. Forms of integration with the global economy and proposed requirements for accession to the European Union are considered in Part III, and Part IV presents a model evaluating the record of structural adjustments in these transforming economies. The main objective of this volume is to thoroughly cover the latest research advances in international trade and payments among these transforming economies. Written by noted authorities from prominent research centers, the chapters have a predominantly survey character and are supported by sound empirical evidence. Combining empirical research with policy evaluation and recommendations, this volume will serve as a resource for further studies on the economic transformation of the former Soviet bloc countries.