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In higher education, the United States is the preeminent global leader, dominating the list of the world's top research universities. But there are signs that its position of global leadership will face challenges in the future, as it has in other realms of international competition. This book addresses the variety of issues crucial to understanding this preeminence and this challenge. It examines the various factors that contributed to America's success in higher education, including openness to people and ideas, generous governmental support, and a tradition of decentralized friendly competition. The book also explores the advantages of holding a dominant position in this marketplace and examines the current state of American higher education in a comparative context, placing particular emphasis on how market forces affect universities. By discussing the differences in quality among students and institutions around the world, it sheds light on the singular aspects of American higher education.

People passionately disagree about the nature of the globalization process. The failure of both the 1999 and 2003 World Trade Organization's (WTO) ministerial conferences in Seattle and Cancun, respectively, have highlighted the tensions among official, international organizations such as the WTO, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, nongovernmental and private sector organizations, and some developing country governments. These tensions are commonly attributed to longstanding disagreements over such issues as labor rights, environmental standards, and tariff-cutting rules. In addition, developing countries are increasingly resentful of the burdens of adjustment placed on them that they argue are not matched by commensurate commitments from developed countries. This book evaluates the arguments of pro-globalists and anti-globalists regarding issues such as globalization's relationship to democracy, its impact on the environment and on labor markets including the brain drain, sweat shop labor, wage levels, and changes in production processes, and the associated expansion of trade and its effects on prices. The contributors to this volume look at multinational firms, foreign investment, and mergers and acquisitions, and present findings that often run counter to the claim that multinational firms primarily seek countries with low wage labor. The book closes with chapters on financial opening and on the relationship between international economic policies and national economic growth rates.

Latin America's economic performance is mediocre at best, despite abundant natural resources and flourishing neighbors to the north. The perplexing question of how some of the wealthiest nations in the world in the nineteenth century are now the most crisis prone has long puzzled economists and historians. This book examines the reality behind the struggling economies of Argentina, Chile, and Mexico. A panel of experts argues here that slow growth, rampant protectionism, and rising inflation plagued Latin America for years, where corrupt institutions and political unrest undermined the financial outlook of already-besieged economies. Tracing Latin America's growth and decline through two centuries, the book illustrates how a once-prosperous continent now lags behind, and offers insight into the relationship between political systems and economic development.

In the late 1990s, economic and financial crises raged through East Asia, devastating economies that had previously been considered among the strongest in the developing world. The crises eventually spread to Russia, Turkey, and Latin America, and impacted the economies of many industrialized nations as well. In today's increasingly interdependent world, finding ways to reduce the risk of future crises—and to improve the management of crises when they occur—has become an international policy challenge of paramount importance. This book rises to that challenge, presenting accessible papers and commentaries on the topic not only from academic economists, but also from high-ranking government officials (in both industrial and developing nations), senior policymakers at international institutions, and major financial investors. Six non-technical papers, each written by a specialist in the topic, provide economic background, introducing sections on exchange rate regimes, financial policies, industrial country policies, IMF stabilization policies, IMF structural programs, and creditor relations. Next, personal statements from the major players give firsthand accounts of what really went on behind the scenes during the crises, giving us a rare glimpse into how international economic policy decisions are actually made. Finally, wide-ranging discussions and debates sparked by these papers and statements are summarized at the end of each section. The result is an overview of the key issues at work in these crises, written by the people who move markets and reshape economies.

India is the second most populous country in the world and also one of the poorest. From the late 1940s to 1980, India's per capita income grew at an average annual rate of only two percent. Expansionist economic reforms during the 1980s boosted economic growth but also unfortunately resulted in high inflation and a balance of payments crisis. As a consequence, in 1991 the government announced sweeping new changes in economic policies. This book evaluates the effects of those changes and identifies areas of the Indian economy still in urgent need of reform. After an overview of Indian economic policies and development since independence, papers focus on the country's fiscal situation, the environment for private economic activity, education, the reservation of certain activities for small-scale industry, and determinants of differentials in rates of growth across the different Indian states. Contributors include academic specialists on India and policy reform, high-level Indian administrators, and present and past policymakers.

It is rare for countries to give up their currencies and thus their ability to influence such critical aspects of their economies as interest and exchange rates. Yet ten years ago a number of European countries did exactly that when they adopted the euro. Despite some dissent, there were a number of arguments in favor of this policy change: it would facilitate exchange of goods, money, and people by decreasing costs; it would increase trade; and it would enhance efficiency and competitiveness at the international level. A decade is an ideal time frame over which to evaluate the success of the euro and whether it has lived up to expectations. To that aim, this book looks at a number of important issues, including the effects of the euro on reform of goods and labor markets; its influence on business cycles and trade among members; and whether the single currency has induced convergence or divergence in the economic performance of member countries. While adoption of the euro may not have met the expectations of its most optimistic proponents, the benefits have been many, and there is reason to believe that the euro is robust enough to survive recent economic shocks.

For Western economists and journalists, the most distinctive facet of the post-war Japanese business world has been the keiretsu, or the insular business alliances among powerful corporations. Within keiretsu groups, argue these observers, firms preferentially trade, lend money, take and receive technical and financial assistance, and cement their ties through cross-shareholding agreements. This book demonstrates that all this talk is really just urban legend. In their analysis, the chapters here show that the very idea of the keiretsu was created and propagated by Marxist scholars in post-war Japan. Western scholars merely repatriated the legend to show the culturally contingent nature of modern economic analysis. Laying waste to the notion of keiretsu, the book debunks several related “facts” as well: that Japanese firms maintain special arrangements with a “main bank,” that firms are systematically poorly managed, and that the Japanese government guided post-war growth. In demolishing these long-held assumptions, this book aims to offer a reliable chronicle of the realities of Japanese business.

Global Rivalries explores rule-making in an era of increasing geopolitical uncertainty. Western firms and states have long dictated the formal terms of trade in the global economy. But with a shift to an Asia-centered economy, how do powerful Western actors construct governance institutions that are enforceable? Under what conditions are the emerging non-Western corporate elite and their state allies, as well as more marginalized firms and states, able to recast the rules to better serve their interests? In this book, Amy A. Quark addresses these questions through a study of negotiations over key institutions - quality standards and dispute settlement arrangements - that undergird the transnational cotton trade. The book traces the ascendance of China as a powerful player challenging the trade dominance of the U.S. state and transnational merchants. It analyses the strategies these rivals used in a struggle over who would set the rules of the game, as well as the implications for more marginalized actors in the cotton trade, such as small cotton producers in West Africa. Quark argues that hegemonic rivalries shape strategies to change institutions. In the cotton trade, actors’ positions within broader conflicts over the organization of the global capitalist system shaped preferences, bargaining power, and thus strategies in institutional struggles. This conflict-driven process created institutional change that was incremental as the path dependencies of existing rules posed significant obstacles to the Chinese state’s bid for institutional power. Nonetheless, the resulting institutions were hybrid in nature as the perceived threat of Chinese power compelled dominant Western actors to retool governance institutions.

As in other large recessions and depressions in times past, the global crisis of 2008–09, aside from its painful economic costs, also raised fears of worrisome prospects for international policymaking. Whether in fiscal and monetary policies, the control of currencies and capital flows, approaches to protectionism and barriers to trade, the regulation of finance, or responses to environment challenges, national economic interests were on the rise, placing at risk longstanding commitments to integration and cooperative policy. The aim of this volume is to consider the major questions that need to be faced going forwards. The goal is to advance debate about how the mostly successful multilateral post-WWII global economic order should not merely continue to function, but also evolve and improve to address the strains created by the pressures of rapid globalization in the last two decades, and now deeply exposed and exacerbated by the crisis.

Governments and development agencies spend considerable resources building property and company registries to protect property rights. When these efforts succeed, owners feel secure enough to invest in their property and banks are able use it as collateral for credit. Similarly, firms prosper when entrepreneurs can transform their firms into legal entities and thus contract more safely. Unfortunately, developing registries is harder than it may seem to observers, especially in developed countries, where registries are often taken for granted. As a result, policies in this area usually disappoint. This book aims to prevent such failures by deepening our understanding of both the value of registries and the organizational requirements for constructing them. Presenting a theory of how registries strengthen property rights and reduce transaction costs, the author analyzes the major tradeoffs and proposes principles for successfully building registries in countries at different stages of development. He focuses on land and company registries, explaining the difficulties they face, including current challenges such as the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States and the dubious efforts made in developing countries toward universal land titling. Broadening the account, the author extends his analytical framework to other registries, including intellectual property and organized exchanges of financial derivatives. With its nuanced presentation of the theoretical and practical implications, the book expands our understanding of how public registries facilitate economic growth.