Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Multinationals and Global Capitalism or Fundamentals of Private Pensions

Multinationals and Global Capitalism: From the Nineteenth to the Twenty First Century

Author: Geoffrey Jones

This book provides a unique contribution to contemporary globalization debates by providing an accessible survey of the growth and role of multinational enterprises in the world economy over the last two hundred years. The author shows how entrepreneurs built a global economy in the nineteenth century by creating firms that pursued resources and markets across borders. It demonstrates how multinationals shifted strategies as the first global economy disintegrated in the political and economic chaos between the two world wars, and how they have driven the creation of the contemporary global economy.
Many of the issues of the global economy have been encountered in the past. This book shows how entrepreneurs and managers met the political, ethical, cultural and organizational challenges of operating across national borders at different times and in different environments. The role of multinationals is placed within their wider political and economic context. There are chapters on the impact of multinationals, and on relations with governments.
The focus on the shifting roles of firms and industries over time rather than abstract trade and capital flows provides compelling evidence on the diversity and discontinuities of the globalization process. The book explains the history of multinationals across a wide spectrum of manufacturing, service and natural resource industries from an international perspective, which ranges widely across different countries. It provides an essential historical framework for understanding global business.
An accessible survey of the history of international business worldwide, this book will be key reading for students taking coursesin International Business, Business History, Multinationals, and Entrepreneurship; and of interest to academics and researchers working in these areas.



New interesting book: Employee Management and Customer Service in the Retail Industry or Enabling Ebusiness Integrating Technologies Architectures and Applications

Fundamentals of Private Pensions

Author: Dan McGill

For almost five decades, Fundamentals of Private Pensions has been the most authoritative text and reference book on private pensions in the world. The revised and updated Eighth Edition adds to past knowledge while providing exciting new perspectives on the provision of retirement income. This new edition is organized into six main sections dealing with a variety of separable pension issues. Section I provides an introductory discussion on the historical evolution of the pension movement and how pensions fit into the patchwork of the whole retirement income security system in the United States. It includes a discussion about the economics of the tax incentives that have played a role in stimulating pension offerings and in the structure of the benefits provided. Section 2 lays out the regulatory environment in which private pension plans operate. Section 3 investigates the various forms of retirement plans that are available to workers to determine how they are structured in practical terms. Section 4 focuses on the economics of pensions. Several of the chapters in this section update and refine material from the prior. New chapters in this volume describe the conversion of some traditional pensions to new hybrid forms, including cash balance and pension equity plans, and the growing phenomenon of phased retirement and the issues raised for employer-sponsored pensions. Section 5 explores the funding and accounting environments in which private employer-sponsored retirement plans operate. The concluding section investigates the handling of assets in employer-sponsored plans and their valuation as well as the insurance provision behind the benefit promises implied by theplans. This latest edition of Fundamentals of Private Pensions will prove invaluable reading for both academics and professionals working in the area of pensions and pension management.



Table of Contents:
1Underlying forces3
2Public pension programs39
3Economics of tax preferences for U.S. retirement plans54
4Historical review of pension regulation79
5Basic regulatory environment and plan qualification requirements98
6Coverage, nondiscrimination, and integration with Social Security127
7Tax consequences - distributions and contributions159
8Form of doing business and transactional considerations183
9Fiduciary responsibility and participant rights208
10Defined benefit design : retirement and ancillary benefits235
11Defined contribution plan design features273
12Hybrid defined benefit plan designs309
13Individual tax-favored savings plans327
14Overall objectives in designing a retirement program353
15Financing of employer-sponsored retirement plans374
16Total retirement income : setting goals and meeting them401
17Dealing with risks of outliving retirement resources444
18Human resource incentives in employer-sponsored retirement plans479
19Motivations and ramifications for the shift to hybrid pensions519
20Changing the end of work - phased retirement552
21Actuarial cost factors595
22Benefit allocation actuarial cost methods617
23Cost allocation actuarial cost methods645
24Pension cost illustrations and forecasts666
25Approaches to meeting the financial obligations of a defined benefit plan679
26Pension accounting712
27Management of pension plan assets : policy737
28Management of pension plan assets : operations763
29Plan termination and plan benefits insurance798

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