Narrow Results

The United States and China have been pursuing policies to decouple the two economies through trade restrictions, prioritizing national advancement and increasing self-sufficiency. This trend is reducing interdependencies between the two nations and their respective allies in attempts to “de-risk” the effects of tight economic and industrial couplings in cases of geopolitical turmoil and disruptive events. While this departs from conventional views in international business (IB), it also presents opportunities for global businesses that can respond to the changing conditions by pursuing a neo-globalization paradigm in a dynamic balance between globalization and de-globalization. A close analysis derives three (most) likely contextual decoupling scenarios determined by pressures from institutional compatibility and national security concerns. Multinational enterprises (MNEs) can adopt a multiplex governance strategy, configuring a portfolio of global business options with flexible entry and exit modes. They can engage in moderate bifurcation by operating in geopolitical regions that are only moderately exposed to security and institutional compatibility. They can also pursue strong bifurcation by operating in sectors and regions with high exposures to security and compatibility conflicts. This chapter considers the strategic implications for MNEs in this global environment and discusses research opportunities and theoretical extensions within the IB field.

‘Asia’ is a big place. At the outset, therefore, it is important to emphasise that most of the discussion in what follows is preoccupied with East Asia, or the region we associate with China, Japan, the Korean peninsula, Taiwan and the countries that make-up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Even this relatively narrow conception of Asia contains a remarkably diverse group of states with every conceivable form of government, level of economic development and security challenge it is possible to imagine. As we shall see, though, other formulations of regional identity are possible and have potentially quite different implications for thinking about broadly conceived security issues. Not only are the protagonists different as regional definitions shrink or expand, but so, too, are the issue areas that preoccupy policymakers in different parts of the world. For example — and all its current problems notwithstanding — Western Europe remains far less concerned about conventional military security than East Asia does, where unresolved territorial claims have given a surprising and rather deflating immediacy to the sorts of security problems many thought were being erased by the pacifying influence of ‘globalisation’ (Gartzke 2007; Weissman 2012)…

The following sections are included:

• Introduction
• Theories of Geopolitics and Regions
• Japan: Regionalism Aborted
• The United States: Regionalism Obstructed
• China: Regionalism Resurgent?
• Concluding Remarks
• References

Australia and Japan have frequently had difficult relations with their neighbours. Whether this is measured by Australia’s often frustrated attempts to gain entry to new regional forums, or Japan’s notoriously difficult relationships with China and Korea, both countries suffer from problems of acceptance and identity. In Australia’s case, other countries in East Asia — notably Malaysia under former Premier Mahathir — have questioned whether it is a ‘genuine’ member of the region (Broinowski 2003). While Japan is unambiguously ‘of’ East Asia, its leadership ambitions and good relations with the region have been undermined by its inability to come to terms with its historical role in the region (Wall 2005). Such issues have made the day-to-day conduct of relations in the region problematic for both countries, and raised fundamental questions about national identity and the enduring impact of each nation’s history. In both countries, the question of where each ‘belongs’, and to which other countries they should be most closely aligned, continue to be central parts of their respective national policy debates…

Every year there are as many as 20,000 scientific papers and reports published about the science of climate and climate change, and the resulting impacts and policy implications. The vast majority of these publications are rigorously done and are peer reviewed before publication, Since about 1990, on a time scale of roughly every 4–6 years, top experts are being asked to assess the state of the science and the implications of the changes occurring in the climate. Internationally, this occurs through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and for the United States, through the US National Climate Assessments (NCAs). These assessments provide important input to policy considerations, at international, national, and local levels…

Legal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization in the United States (Environmental Law Institute, Michael B. Gerrard & John C. Dernbach eds., 2019) is a comprehensive compilation and analysis of more than 1,000 legal tools that can be employed to reduce US greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by at least 80% from 1990 levels by 2050. This 80×50 target and similarly aggressive carbon abatement goals are often referred to as deep decarbonization, distinguished because it requires systemic changes to the energy economy…

This chapter describes how economic models are used to answer questions about policy changes, specifically in the context of a carbon fee-and-dividend system. A carbon fee-and-dividend is a price on carbon dioxide emissions that returns the revenues gained to ordinary households in the form of a monthly check. The chapter describes, in nontechnical terms, the economic models and modeling processes involved and how they are similar and different from climate models…

The article on the Climate Science Special Report: 4th U.S. National Climate Assessment (NCA4), Volume I, summarizes the basis and the requirements for developing U.S. national climate assessments. The reader is referred to that material, as it is not repeated here. Instead, the focus in this chapter is on NCA4, Volume II, which is an assessment of climate-related impacts, risks, and adaptation in the United States. NCA4, Volume II (USGCRP, 2018), was published on November 23, 2018, and the entire assessment report is available at NCA2018.globalchange.gov…

Economic research on the impact of higher temperatures on economic activity in developed countries has traditionally focused on economic activities that are naturally exposed to outdoor weather conditions, primarily agriculture. However, agriculture is a small fraction of total economic production in most developed countries, such as the United States. Colacito, Hoffmann and Phan (2019) (henceforth CHP) provide a more complete picture of the economic effects of higher temperatures in the United States, by documenting a strong negative effect of rising summer temperatures on a broad range of sectors of the U.S. economy, including Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate. Furthermore they show that these effects are particularly strong during the summer season, and have been subject to acceleration during the last 20 years.

The text and associated Supplemental Materials contribute internally consistent and therefore entirely comparable regional, temporal, and sectoral risk profiles to a growing literature on regional economic vulnerability to climate change. A large collection of maps populated with graphs of Monte-Carlo simulation results support a communication device in this regard — a convenient visual that we hope will make comparative results tractable and credible and resource allocation decisions more transparent. Since responding to climate change is a risk-management problem, it is important to note that these results address both sides of the risk calculation. They characterize likelihood distributions along four alternative emissions futures (thereby reflecting the mitigation side context); and they characterize consequences along these transient trajectories (which can thereby inform planning for the iterative adaptation side). Looking across the abundance of sectors that are potentially vulnerable to some of the manifestations of climate change, the maps therefore hold the potential of providing comparative information about the magnitude, timing, and regional location of relative risks. This is exactly the information that planners who work to protect property and public welfare by allocating scarce resources across competing venues need to have at their disposal — information about relative vulnerabilities across time and space and contingent on future emissions and future mitigation. It is also the type of information that integrated assessment researchers need to calibrate and update their modeling efforts — scholars who are exemplified by Professor Nordhaus who created and exercised the Dynamic Integrated Climate-Economy and Regional Integrated Climate-Economy models.

There is a widespread feeling that the Japanese government is unfairly acquiring for its economy the few really good tickets to prosperity in the twenty-first century. Foreign reactions to Japanese targeting have ranged from concern that such practices are unfair and inconsistent with the international economic system and that Japan should be forced to eliminate them, to intense admiration and a hope the other countries can somehow emulate Japan. Understanding Japanese practices, particularly as they relate to high technology industries, requires an analysis not only of the relationships between government and business in Japan, but also of the relationships between government and education and between education and business. From the perspective of an analysis of the inter-relationships between these institutions, it is possible to understand the character of the market distortions and market failures with which Japanese policy has sought to cope. It should also then be possible to assess whether other countries face a similar set of problems requiring similar interventions. These analyses will proceed with particular focus on the development of the biotechnology industry in Japan and the United States.

Although many today speak of ours as a knowledge society, ignorance seems to flourish all around us. Even in the United States, considered one of the most advanced of societies, millions question some of the most established results of science (such as evolution, global warming, and the benefits of childhood immunization) while they fail to question other results (such as many of the claims about the safety and effectiveness of drugs offered by the pharmaceutical industry). What's more, only a small fraction (less than one-sixth) of the information gathered in the U.S. each year is even made public (the rest is kept secret by industry or government), and the information that is made public often varies in content depending on the sources consulted. And the problem, many say, is getting worse…