How does contract manufacturing /outsourcing affect productivity? Existing studies have conflicting empirical findings regarding this issue. This paper aims to reconcile these conflicting findings in the literature by viewing the research question through the lens of the property rights theory. The authors develop a moderated moderation model to empirically examine how productivity is influenced by the interactions among contract manufacturing, competition, and suppliers’ productivity spillover. Our model shows that though conflicting findings have been reported in the literature, each finding holds true under certain conditions which are identified in our paper. In brief, contract manufacturing /outsourcing improves productivity when suppliers’ productivity growth is above average and focal industry’s competition is at medium level. On the other hand, if suppliers’ productivity growth is low, or focal industry’s competition is too high or too low, the impact of contract manufacturing /outsourcing could be negative or not significant.

The authors contend that the pervasiveness of piracy on the African coasts is threatening global security. Within Somalia, it is causing a disruption of food supplies, fostering internal conflict, and increasing the prices of basic commodities. Globally, it is orchestrating a dramatic rise in maritime insurance premiums and maritime insecurity, disrupting international commerce, increasing the possibility of an environmental disaster, and encouraging a nervous, emerging relationship with terrorism. Piracy must be stopped. To achieve this objective, the authors recommend revamping the international law on piracy, maintaining adequate coastal security along the hot spots on the African coasts, using military force, establishing safe maritime lanes, training crews on security measures, stationing armed guards on ships, and most importantly, reestablishing political stability in Somalia.

This research examines supply chain collaboration effects on organizational performance in global value chain (GVC) infrastructure by focusing on GVC disaggregation, market turbulence, inequality, market globalization, product diversity, exploitation, and technological breakthroughs. The research strives to develop a better understanding of global value chains through relational view, behavioral, and contingency theories along with institutional and stakeholder theories of supply chains. Based on conflicting insights from these theories, this research investigates how relationships and operational outcomes of collaboration fare when market turbulence is present. Data is obtained and analyzed from focal firms that are engaged in doing business in emerging markets (e.g., India), and headquartered in the United States. We investigate relational outcomes (e.g., trust, credibility, mutual respect, and relationship commitment) among supply chain partners, and found that these relational outcomes result in better operational outcomes (e.g., profitability, market share increase, revenue generation, etc.). From managerial standpoint, supply chain managers should focus on relational outcomes that can strengthen operational outcomes in GVCs resulting in stronger organizational performance. The research offers valuable insights for theory and practice of global value chains by focusing on the GVC disaggregation through the measurement of market turbulence, playing a key role in the success of collaborative buyer–supplier relationships (with a focus on US companies doing business in India) leading to an overall improved firm performance.

Africa has a long and disturbing history with outside powers exploiting the continent for its natural and human resources in furtherance of their own economic and developmental objectives. In this essay, China's main objectives and the prospects and implications these have on Africa's development are examined. The authors argue that there are two very important perspectives—exploitation and opportunity—on China's role in Africa's development. The authors also argue that African countries must implement meaningful structural and policy changes that could enable them to leverage China's involvement to enhance their development. Whether Chinese interest and involvement brings the danger of renewed exploitation without accompanying sustainable development depends on the extent to which African countries are able to take advantage of the opportunities of this growing interest and transform themselves by circumventing the many economic, political, and social contradictions that are afflicting them.

Accurate prediction of gasoline price is important for the automobile makers to adjust designs and productions as well as marketing plans of their products. It is also necessary for government agencies to set effective inflation monitoring and environmental protection policies. To predict future levels of the gasoline price, due to difficulties of obtaining accurate estimates of influential external factors, data driven time-series forecasting models thus become more suitable given the convenience and practicability they are providing. In this paper, five popular time-series forecasting models, i.e., ARIMA-GARCH, exponential smoothing, grey system, neural network, and support vector machines models, are applied to predict gasoline prices in China. Comparing the performances of these models, it is noted that for this specific time series, a parsimonious ARIMA model performs the best in predicting the gasoline prices for a short time horizon, while for the medium length and long run the SVR and FNN models outperforms others respectively.