Search results

Understood as "race to the bottom," globalization means transferring transnational companies' plants to locations with lower labor costs. The cases of job outsourcing to China & India & the differences between investing in vs outsourcing jobs to developing countries are discussed. The US labor movement has responded to this development by demanding protection against immigrants & imports, but this strategy is both divisive & ineffective: divisive because outsourced jobs do not feel oppressive to local workers, since the poor wages at those jobs still mean an increase in pay for them, & ineffective because the goal should be human development & empowerment of the many. The race to the bottom has spurred the anti-capitalism & anti-globalization movements into reframing a positive vision of international solidarity & social justice. M. Pflum

Understood as "race to the bottom," globalization means transferring transnational companies' plants to locations with lower labor costs. The cases of job outsourcing to China & India & the differences between investing in vs outsourcing jobs to developing countries are discussed. The US labor movement has responded to this development by demanding protection against immigrants & imports, but this strategy is both divisive & ineffective: divisive because outsourced jobs do not feel oppressive to local workers, since the poor wages at those jobs still mean an increase in pay for them, & ineffective because the goal should be human development & empowerment of the many. The race to the bottom has spurred the anti-capitalism & anti-globalization movements into reframing a positive vision of international solidarity & social justice. M. Pflum

Abstract
RuPaul's Drag Race (RPDR) is a reality television competition program for drag queens that has continued to expand its popularity, both in the LGBT population and in wider audiences. Drag queens and their highlighting of performativity have long been notable for scholars of gender, while RPDR itself has steadily gained scholarly attention. Much of the literature, while acknowledging the potential for subversiveness, takes issue with its reproduction of hegemonic stereotypes. I review season 7, as well as the show's relation to some of the political economic elements of the drag industry, and suggest that the "policing" of drag, identified by Sarah Tucker Jenkins, may be eroding. In essence, RPDR has shown a decisive trend toward more stylistic liberty. This includes the liberty to break previously established rules around gender norms in performance. The show's greater popularity and profitability may enable this liberty.

This paper provides an empirical assessment of race-to-the-bottom unilateralism. It suggests that decades of unilateral tariff cutting in Asia's emerging economies have been driven by a competition to attract FDI from Japan. Using spatial econometrics, I show that tariffs on parts and components, a crucial locational determinant for Japanese firms, converged across countries following a contagion pattern. Tariffs followed those of competing countries if the latter were lower, if FDI jealousy was high, and when competing countries were at a similar level of development.

The dominant perspective in discussions of labour and environmental standards and globalization is that of North–South competition and its impact on Northern standards. This paper presents an alternative perspective, that of South–South competition to export to the North and its impact on Southern standards. It develops a simple model of Southern competition, and demonstrates that whether a Southern race to the bottom is possible depends intricately on the Northern demand curve, the size of large exporters relative to each other and the relative size of the competitive fringe of small exporters. The possibility that Northern trade protectionism may undermine Southern standards is also examined.

This paper assembles a new dataset on corporate income tax regimes in 50 emerging and developing economies over 1996-2007 and analyzes their impact on corporate tax revenues and domestic and foreign investment. It computes effective tax rates to take account of complicated special regimes, such as partial tax holidays, temporarily reduced rates and increased investment allowances. There is evidence of a partial race to the bottom: countries have been under pressure to lower tax rates in order to lure and boost investment. In the case of standard tax systems (i.e. tax rules applying under norma