Reading Flashcards
Why Trade?
Nations trade in order to exchange valuable, unique, hard-to-imitate resources and to share in the gains from trade. Countries gain from trade by exploiting their comparative advantages in the production of particular goods and services. in order to achieve some benefit for their citizens, such as a higher per capita standard of living. The foreign exchange market is necessary because there are two prices in international trade: the domestic price of the goods and the price of that currency in terms of the currency of the trading partner.
Why Supply and Demand?
Economists use the forces of supply and demand to analyze equilibrium prices and quantities.
wholly owned subsidiary (WOS)
A subsidiary located in a foreign country that is entirely owned by the parent multinational.
What fundamental aspect of democracy is relevant to the conduct of global business?
- An individual?s right to freedom of expression and organization.
- Right to organize economically has not only been extended to domestic individuals to firms, but also to foreign individuals and firms that come to do business.
What does International trade involve?
Currencies from around the globe. Managers must understand foreign exchange and exchange rates in order to profit from and manage international trade.
What determines the success and failure of firms around the globe?
- An institution-based /Environment view (shed a great deal of light on what drives firm performance around the globe); and
- Resource-based view (Firm?s internal valuable and unique firm-specific resources and capabilities that are not shared by competitors in the same environments.
What are Formal Institutions?
Formal institutions include laws, regulations, and political and legal systems. Institutions set the ?rules of the game? for competition and international trade.
Washington Consensus
A view centered on the unquestioned belief in the superiority of private ownership over state ownership in economic policy making, which is often spearheaded by two Washington-based international organizations: the International Monetary Fund and the
vertical FDI
A type of FDI in which a firm moves upstream or downstream at different value chain stages in a host country.
upstream vertical FDI
A type of vertical FDI in which a firm engages in an upstream stage of the value chain in a host country.
turnkey projects
A project in which clients pay contractors to design and construct new facilities and train personnel.
Turnkey project
A project in which clients pay contractors to design and construct new facilities and train personnel.
TRIPS
- Adopting the Paris Convention is required in order to become a signatory country to the WTO?s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)
- Once countries join TRIPS, firms are often forced to pay more attention to innovation.
- Given the global differences in the formal rules, much stricter IP rights protection is provided by TRIPS.
Tribal
One tribe or ethnic group (which may or may not be the majority of the population) monopolizing political power and oppressing other tribes or ethnic groups. (e.g. Rwanda)
Transaction Costs
- The costs associated with economic transactions or, more broadly, the costs of doing business
- Transaction costs = ?the economic counterpart of frictions: ?Do the gears mesh, are the parts lubricated, is there needless slippage or other loss of energy?? Do the parties to exchange operate harmoniously, or are there frequent misunderstandings and conflicts?? (Oliver Williamson (2009 Nobel Prize in economics)
- If Transaction costs become prohibitively high due to unstable institutional frameworks, certain transactions will not take place. (e.g. No credible institutional frameworks that protect investors, domestic investors puts their money abroad (e.g. Africa, Russia))
Trademarks
Exclusive legal right of firms to use specific names, brands, and designs to differentiate their products from others.
Trade Gains
arise for a variety of reasons. Theories of international trade include mercantilism, absolute advantage, comparative advantage, product lifecycle, strategic trade, and national competitive advantage
Totalitarianism (dictatorship)
A political system in which one person or party exercises absolute political control over the population.
Totalitarianism
- Opposite of Democracy (no right to economic expression)
- A political system in which one person or party exercises absolute political control over the population. (also known as dictatorship)
- Four Types: Communist, Right Wing, Theocratic, and Tribal.
- High Political Risk: Totalitarian countries often experience wars, riots, protests, chaos, and breakdowns.
- Hostility towards business. Not as good for business as a democracy.
Three Views of Globalization
- A new phenomenon beginning in the late 20th century, driven by recent technological innovations and a Western ideology focused on exploiting and dominating the world through MNEs.
- Globalization has always been part and parcel of human history.
- ?closer integration of the countries and peoples of the world which has been brought about by the enormous reduction of the costs of transportation and communication, and the breaking down of artificial barriers to the flows of goods, services, capital, knowledge, and (to a lesser extent) people across borders.
Three Pillars Support Formal and Informal Institutions
- Regulatory
- normative, and
- cognitive pillars.
Theories that drives economic development in different countries?
- Culture
- Geography
- Institutions
Theocratic Legal System
- A legal system based on religious teachings.
- Islamic law is the only surviving example of a theocratic legal system that is formally practiced by some governments (e.g. Iran and Saudi Arabia).
- Myth: Islam is anti-business
- Mohammed was a merchant trader and the tenants of Islam are pro-business in general.
- Koran advises against certain business practices which increases the property, overhead, and personnel costs.
theocratic law
A legal system based on religious teachings.
Theocratic
Monopolization of political power in the hands of one religious party or group. (e.g. Iran)
The Pendulum View on Globalization
- The view that globalization has both rosy and dark sides, and it changes over time World War II major western countries committed to global trade and investment.
- 1950-1970: Communist countries sought to develop self sufficiency. Other countries refused global trade and investment and fostered and protected domestic industries that weren?t competitive. Four tigers moved from emerging to developed.
- 1970-2000: China, Latin America, India joined the world economy (?emerging economies.?)
- 2000-Present: Backlash, 2008 global economic crisis, PIGS crisis, Protectionism (e.g. Buy American, hire locals)
technology spillovers
Technology diffused from foreign firms to domestic firms
Technology spillover
Technology diffused from foreign firms to domestic firms.
Target exchange rates (crawling bands)
Specified upper or lower bounds within which an exchange rate is allowed to fluctuate.
target exchange rates
Specified upper or lower bounds within which an exchange rate is allowed to fluctuate.
sunk costs
Cost that a firm has to endure even when its investment turns out to be unsatisfactory
Sunk cost
Cost that a firm has to endure even when its investment turns out to be unsatisfactory.
Strategic hedging
Spreading out activities in a number of countries in different currency zones to offset any currency losses in one region through gains in other regions.
Statute Of Monopolies
- Enacted in Great Britain in 1624
- World?s first patent law to formally protect the IP rights of inventors and make innovation financially lucrative.
- This law has been imitated around the world.
- Its impact is still felt today, as we now expect continuous innovation to be the norm.
- This would not have happened had there not been a system of strong protection of IP rights.
State owned Enterprises (SOE):
- A firm owned and controlled by the state (government).
- At least 10% owned by the state.
- 2008 Crisis most governments in developed economies took similar action by bailing out their banks and turning them into SOEs. (e.g. Hong Kong)
spread
The difference between the offer price and the bid price.
Spot transactions
The classic single-shot exchange of one currency for another.
Spot transaction
The classic single-shot exchange of one currency for another.
SOX law
- The Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) law
- Prevent Enron-style frauds
- Makes it hard to list shares on US stock exchanges.
- Result: US firms increasingly list elsewhere or go private, foreign firms shy away from US listings and US share of global initial public offerings (IPOs) dropped from 67% in 2002 (when SOX passed) to 16% in 2011.
sovereign wealth funds (SWFs)
A state-owned investment fund composed of financial assets such as stocks, bonds, real estate, or other financial instruments funded by foreign exchange assets
Semi-Globalization
- Do not have a globally integrated market.
- A perspective that suggests that barriers to market integration at borders are high, but not high enough to insulate countries from each other completely.
- More complex than extremes of total isolation and total globalization.
- Calls for different ways to doing business.
- In Total isolation on a nation-state basis would suggest localization-a strategy of treating each country as a unique market. (e.g. 100 different drinks)
- In Total Globalization , would lead to standardization-a strategy of treating the entire world as one market. (e.g. world car)
scale of entry
The amount of resources committed to entering a foreign market.
Risk Management
- The identification and assessment of risks and the preparation to minimize the impact of high-risk, unfortunate events. -the identification and assessment of risks and the preparation to minimize the impact of high-risk, unfortunate events.
- A technique to prepare and plan for multiple scenarios (either high or low risk). is now extensively used by firms around the world.
Right-wing
- Intense hatred against communism (e.g. Phillipines)
- One party, typically backed by the military, restricts political freedom, arguing that such freedom would lead to communism.
Reverse innovation (Emerging Economies)
- An innovation that is adopted first in emerging economies and is then diffused around the world.
- The origin of new innovations is from the base of the pyramid.
- The flow of innovation is bottom up. Potential to penetrate to the top.
- Past: Innovation flow is top down from Triad (US, EU, JPN)
Resource Based View
How winning firms acquire and develop such unique and enviable resources and capabilities and how competitor firms imitate and then innovate in an effort to outcompete the winning firms.
Research and development (R&D) contracts
Outsourcing agreement in R&D
between firms.
Regulatory Pillar
a. Primary supportive pillar
b. Represented by laws, regulations, and rules.
c. The coercive power of Governments
d. For example, paying taxes out of fear of the coercive power of the government if they are caught not paying.
Reason for Difference between PPP and GDP
Because the cost of living (such as housing and haircuts) in emerging economies tends to be lower than that in developed economies.
radical view
A political view that is hostile to FDI.
R&D contract
Outsourcing agreement in R&D
between firms.
quota
The weight a member country carries within the IMF, which determines the amount of its financial contribution (technically known as its ?subscription?), its capacity to borrow from the IMF,
and its voting power.
Pure Market System
- An economy that is characterized by the ?invisible hand? of market forces. (Adam Smith)
- Laissez Faire: The government takes a hands-off approach
- All factors of production should be privately owned.
- The government should only perform functions that the private sector cannot perform (such as providing roads and defense).
No country has ever completely embraced Adam Smith?s ideal laissez faire.
Pure Command System
- An economy that has elements of both a market economy and a command economy.
- Relative distribution of market forces versus command forces.
- The economic system of most countries
- A country that organizes its economy mostly (but not completely) by market forces and that still has certain elements of a command economy.
- ?Market economy,? has a different meaning in each country (Variety of capitalism)
Purchasing power parity (PPP)
- A conversion that determines the equivalent amount of goods and services that different currencies can purchase, which is an adjustment to reflect the differences in cost of living
- Using official (nominal) exchange rates without adjusting for PPP, emerging economies contribute about 26% of the global GDP.
- The PPP between two countries is the rate at which the currency of one country needs to be converted into that of a second country to ensure that a given amount of the first country?s currency will purchase the same volume of goods and services in the second country.
Proponents of Globalization
- Elite of Society (executives, policy makers, and scholars in both developed and emerging economies. Institutions are controlled by the Elites.)
- Failed to take into sufficient account the social, political, and environmental costs associated with globalization.
- Does not mean that most other members of the society share the same views.
- Business Students (economic gains, self-selection, free trade)
Property Rights
- The legal right to use an economic property (resource) and to derive income and benefits from it.
- Focuses on the role played by formal institutions, particularly the protection of property rights afforded by a functioning legal system.
- Examples of property include homes, offices, and factories.
- Because of the stability and predictability of such a legal system, tangible property can lead to an invisible, parallel life alongside its material existence.
- It can be used as collateral for credit. For example, the single most important source of funds for new start-ups in the United States is the mortgage of entrepreneurs? houses.
- Funds through informal means (e.g. parents) are almost certainly more limited than funds that could have been provided formally by banks.
- To develop and facilitate economic growth, a country needs is formal protection of property rights in order to facilitate economic growth. (e.g. Africa)
Profit maximizing Firms
make production and pricing decisions based on their costs of production. It is important to understand the types of costs in order to analyze firm behavior and market outcomes. Economists take opportunity costs into account when calculating economic profit. Firms in competitive markets produce a quantity of output such that marginal revenue equals marginal cost. Because firms in competitive markets are price takers, their marginal revenue equals the market price. Hence, firms in competitive markets set output so that price equals marginal cost. With free entry and exit, economic profit in competitive markets is driven down to zero in the long-run. Unlike firms in competitive markets, monopolists are sole producers. In comparison to firms in competitive markets, monopolists produce less, sell at a higher price, and earn greater profits. There is a deadweight loss to society associated with monopolies.
pragmatic nationalism
A political view that only approves FDI
when its benefits outweigh its costs.
post-Bretton Woods system
A system of flexible exchange rate regimes with no official common denominator.
political system
The rules of the game on how a country is governed politically
Political Risk
- Risk associated with political changes that may negatively impact domestic and foreign firms.
- Most Extreme is Expropriation of Foreign assets.
Political and Economic Forces
A global business must deal with a range of political systems and maneuver successfully among a network of economic forces and policies. Just like having two differing prices in international trade, there are political systems that differ to varying degrees (e.g., running the gamut from various forms of socialism to free-market capitalism). Success in this environment requires the knowledge and use of such tools as hedging techniques as reflected in financial markets highlighted by foreign exchange forward, futures, and options markets.
Piracy
- Unauthorized use of intellectual property
- Widespread, ranging from unauthorized sharing of music files to deliberate counterfeiting of branded products.
- Global problem.
peg
A stabilizing policy of linking a developing country?s currency to a key currency.
Patents
Exclusive legal right of inventors of new products or processes to derive income from such inventions. are legal rights awarded by government authorities to inventors of new products or processes, who are given exclusive (monopoly) rights to derive income from such inventions through activities such as manufacturing, licensing, or selling.
Patents
Exclusive legal right of inventors of new products or pro- cesses to derive income from such inventions.
Patent
Exclusive legal right of inventors of new products or processes to derive income from such inventions.
Paris Convention
For the Protection of Industrial Property is the ?gold standard? for a higher level of IP rights protection.
ownership
An MNE?s possession and leveraging of certain valuable, rare, hard-to-imitate, and organizationally embedded (VRIO) assets overseas in the context of FDI.
opportunism
The act of seeking self-interest with guile.
oligopoly
Industry dominated by a small number of players.
Oligopolies
markets with only a few sellers. Oligopolists can maximize their profits by forming a cartel and setting price and quantity as if they were a monopolist. However, the Prisoners? Dilemma tells us that it is difficult to maintain cooperation in cartels. Hence, oligopolies tend to have lower prices and higher levels of output than monopolies.
OLI advantages
A firm?s quest for ownership (O) advantages, location (L) advantages, and internalization (I) advantages via FDI.
offer rate
The price to sell a currency.
obsolescing bargain
The deal struck by MNEs and host governments, which change their requirements after the initial FDI entry.
norms
Values, beliefs, and actions of relevant players that influence the focal individuals and firms.
Normative Pillar
- Informal Institution
- The mechanism through which norms influence individual and firm behavior.
- How the values, beliefs, and actions of other relevant players influence the focal individuals and firms.
- Rushing into China, imitating other companies, without a clear understanding on how to make it work.
Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)
- An organization that is not affiliated with governments. such as environmentalists, human rights activists, and consumer groups., who oppose globalization
- Focus: Firms, especially MNEs, should have a broader concern for the various stakeholders affected by the MNEs? actions around the world.
- Feel powerless. Resort to unconventional tactics (e.g. mass protests)
- Ignoring them will be a grave failure when doing business around the globe.
- Many MNE firms view them as partners.
Non-equity modes
A new corporate entity created and jointly owned by two or more parent companies.
Non-equity mode
A mode of entry (exports and contractual agreements) that tends to reflect relatively smaller commitments to overseas markets.
Multinational Enterprise (MNE)
- Most frequently discussed foreign entrant
- A firm that engages in foreign direct investment (FDI).
- Engages in both Foreign and domestic (e.g. compete/collaborate with foreign entrants.)
- Focus primarily on top and second tiers on the pyramid and countries whose income levels are rising.
moral hazard
Recklessness when people and organizations (including firms and governments) do not have to face the full consequences of their actions.
Monopolistically competitive markets
consist of many firms selling differentiated products with free entry. Firms in monopolistically competitive markets set output so that they have excess capacity and price above their marginal costs. There is a deadweight loss to society associated with monopolistic competition, although it is smaller than the deadweight loss associated with monopoly.
modes of entry
Method used to enter a foreign market.
Mixed Market System
- An economy that has elements of both a market economy and a command economy.
- Relative distribution of market forces versus command forces.
- The economic system of most countries
- A country that organizes its economy mostly (but not completely) by market forces and that still has certain elements of a command economy.
- ?Market economy,? has a different meaning in each country (Variety of capitalism)
mixed economy
An economy that has elements of both a market economy and a command economy.
Microeconomics
concerned with how individuals and firms make decisions. In microeconomics, supply and demand combine to determine equilibrium quantities and prices. The study of microeconomics focuses on the laws of supply and demand, elasticity, and the effect of government interventions. According to the laws of supply and demand, when prices increase, quantity supplied will go up whereas quantity demanded will go down.
market imperfections (market failure)
The imperfection of the market mechanisms that make transactions prohibitively costly and sometimes
make transactions unable to take place.
Market imperfection (market failure)
The imperfection of the market mechanisms that make transactions prohibitively costly and sometimes
make transactions unable to take place.
market economy
An economy that is characterized by the ?invisible hand? of market forces.
management control rights
The rights to appoint key managers and establish control mechanisms.
Macroeconomics
involves the study of how the economy works as a whole. In macroeconomics, fiscal and monetary policies combine to affect business cycles, aggregate demand, inflation, and unemployment. Macroeconomics is concerned with the functioning of the economy as a whole.
Macroeconomic Principles
Fiscal and monetary policies are the key tools used to offset swings in the business cycle. Fiscal policies are implemented by the government through spending and taxes. Monetary policies are implemented by the Federal Reserve primarily through open market operations, reserve ratios, and the discount rate. Policy makers intervene in the economy to correct downturns in the business cycle and control aggregate demand, inflation, and unemployment.
location-specific advantages
The benefits a firm reaps from the features specific to a place.
Location
Advantages enjoyed by firms operating in a certain location.