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Exploring the concept of quality management from a new point of view, this book presents a holistic model of how consumers judge the quality of products. It links consumer perceptions of quality to the design and delivery of the final product, and presents models and methods for improving the quality of these products and services. It offers readers an improved understanding of how and why the design process must consider how the consumer will perceive a product or service. In order to facilitate the presentation and understanding of these concepts, illustrations and case examples are also provided throughout the book. This book provides an invaluable resource for managers, designers, manufacturers, professional practitioners and academics interested in quality management. It also offers a useful supplementary text for marketing and quality management courses.
Does what economies export matter for development? If so, can industrial policies improve on the export basket generated by the market? This book approaches these questions from a variety of conceptual and policy viewpoints. Reviewing the theoretical arguments in favor of industrial policies, the authors first ask whether existing indicators allow policy makers to identify growth-promoting sectors with confidence. To this end, they assess, and ultimately cast doubt upon, the reliability of many popular indicators advocated by proponents of industrial policy. Second, and central to their critique, the authors document extraordinary differences in the performance of countries exporting seemingly identical products, be they natural resources or 'high-tech' goods. Further, they argue that globalization has so fragmented the production process that even talking about exported goods as opposed to tasks may be misleading. Reviewing evidence from history and from around the world, the authors conclude that policy makers should focus less on what is produced, and more on how it is produced. They analyze alternative approaches to picking winners but conclude by favoring 'horizontal-ish' policies--for instance, those that build human capital or foment innovation in existing and future products—that only incidentally favor some sectors over others.
The traditional trade models, which rely on a comparative advantage based on regions' technology or endowments, or the new trade theory, designed to explain trade between the countries at a similar level of development, fail to replicate recent evidence on world trade patterns and prices. This evidence reveals North-South specialization across products of the same industries and product groups but different quality, rather than across different industries. Furthermore, countries at a higher level of technological development have higher export prices, which shows that more advanced technology does not necessarily imply higher cost efficiency. Therefore, in order to analyze the endogenous growth mechanisms and implications of the IPR protection policy in a North-South trade set-up, this thesis develops a fully-endogenous theoretical framework based on the notion of quality vintages, which results in the North-South production and trade specialization in different quality segments of the market. The model is used to investigate the growth effects of the South opening to trade and the welfare effects of different IPR policy instruments. Finally, the last chapter abstracts from endogenous growth mechanisms.
This paper examines how country, industry and firm characteristics interact in general equilibrium to determine nations' responses to trade liberalization. When firms possess heterogeneous productivity, countries differ in relative factor abundance and industries vary in factor intensity, falling trade costs induce reallocations of resources both within and across industries and countries. These reallocations generate substantial job turnover in all sectors, spur relatively more creative destruction in comparative advantage industries than comparative disadvantage industries, and magnify ex ante comparative advantage to create additional welfare gains from trade. The relative ascendance of high-productivity firms within industries boosts aggregate productivity and drives down consumer prices. In contrast with the neoclassical model, these price declines dampen and can even reverse the real wage losses of scarce factors as countries liberalize.
Effective design and manufacturing, both of which are necessary to produce high-quality products, are closely related. However, effective design is a prerequisite for effective manufacturing. This new book explores the status of engineering design practice, education, and research in the United States and recommends ways to improve design to increase U.S. industry's competitiveness in world markets.