BiblioVault - Books about Service industries

Deregulation and Interdependence in the Asia-Pacific Region

Edited by Takatoshi Ito and Anne O. Krueger

University of Chicago Press, 2000

Recently, real and artificial barriers to international transactions have fallen sharply, causing a rise in the overall volume of international trade. East Asia has been particularly affected by the economic stresses and gains derived from deregulation. Deregulation and Interdependence in the Asia-Pacific Region explores the broadly similar experiences of certain economies in the region—China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea—in dealing with the potentially volatile process of deregulation, and examines the East Asian response to a rapidly transforming economic environment.

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International Trade in Services and Intangibles in the Era of Globalization

Edited by Marshall B. Reinsdorf and Matthew J. Slaughter

University of Chicago Press, 2009

Quantitative measures of international exchange have historically focused on trade in tangible products or capital. However, services have recently become a larger portion of developed economies and international trade, and will only increase in the future. In International Trade in Services and Intangibles in the Era of Globalization, Marshall Reinsdorf and Matthew J. Slaughter examine new and emerging patterns of trade, especially the growing importance of transactions involving services or intangible assets such as intellectual property.

A distinguished team of contributors analyzes the challenges involved in measuring trade in intangibles, the comparative advantages enjoyed by United States service industries, and the heightened international competition for jobs, capital investment, economic growth, and tax revenue that results from trade in services. This comprehensive volume will be necessary reading for scholars seeking to understand the rapidly changing global economy.

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Output Measurement in the Service Sectors

Edited by Zvi Griliches

University of Chicago Press, 1992

Is the fall in overall productivity growth in the United States and other developed countries related to the rising share of the service sectors in the economy? Since services represent well over half of the U.S. gross national product, it is also important to ask whether these sectors have had a slow rate of growth, as this would act as a major drag on the productivity growth of the overall economy and on its competitive performance. In this timely volume, leading experts from government and academia argue that faulty statistics have prevented a clear understanding of these issues.

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Service Economies

Militarism, Sex Work, and Migrant Labor in South Korea

Jin-kyung Lee

University of Minnesota Press, 2010

Service Economies presents an alternative narrative of South Korean modernity by examining how working-class labor occupies a central space in linking the United States and Asia to South Korea's changing global position from a U.S. neocolony to a subempire.

Making surprising and revelatory connections, Jin-kyung Lee analyzes South Korean military labor in the Vietnam War, domestic female sex workers, South Korean prostitution for U.S. troops, and immigrant/migrant labor from Asia in contemporary South Korea. Foregrounding gender, sexuality, and race, Lee reimagines the South Korean economic "miracle" as a global and regional articulation of industrial, military, and sexual proletarianization.

Lee not only addresses these under-studied labors individually but also integrates and unites them to reveal an alternative narrative of a changing South Korean working class whose heterogeneity is manifested in its objectification. Delving into literary and popular cultural sources as well as sociological work, Lee locates South Korean development in its military and economic interactions with the United States and other Asian nation-states, offering a unique perspective on how these practices have shaped and impacted U.S.-South Korea relations.

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The Service Sector in Soviet Economic Growth

A Comparative Study

Gur Ofer

Harvard University Press, 1973

The service sector represents a smaller share of the national economy in the Soviet Union than in other countries at similar levels. This gap is found in trade, in private and business services, and, surprisingly, in public administration. Gur Ofer provides a twofold examination of this phenomenon. He uses cross country comparisons to study the “normal” relationships between the size of the service institutions and economic development. At the same time he investigates specific factors operating in Socialist and Soviet countries, thus uniting the special Soviet case with general development theory.

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Trade in Services in the Asia-Pacific Region

Edited by Takatoshi Ito and Anne O. Krueger

University of Chicago Press, 2002

In recent years the tremendous growth of the service sector—including international trade in services—has outstripped that of manufacturing in many industrialized nations. As the importance of services has grown, economists have begun to focus on policy issues raised by them and have tried to understand what, if any, differences there are between production and delivery of goods and services.

This volume is the first book-length attempt to analyze trade in services in the Asia-Pacific region. Contributors provide overviews of basic issues involved in studying the service sector; investigate the impact of increasing trade in services on the economies of Taiwan, Korea, and Hong Kong; present detailed analyses of specific service sectors (telecommunications, financial services, international tourism, and accounting); and extend our understanding of trade in services beyond the usual concept (measured in balance of payment statistics) to include indirect services and services undertaken abroad by subsidiaries and affiliates.

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Working In Service Society

Cameron Macdonald

Temple University Press, 1996