More broadly, strategic alliances are more difficult to manage and coordinate than single ventures; the potential for misunderstanding and disagreement, particularly between partners from different cultures, is great. Certainly many such alliances are short lived.

Without the parallel development of systems of monetary - and credit-based exchange - there could have been no development of economies beyond the most primitive organizational forms and the most geographically restricted sales.

More broadly, strategic alliances are more difficult to manage and coordinate than single ventures; the potential for misunderstanding and disagreement, particularly between partners from different cultures, is great. Certainly many such alliances are short lived.

It is indeed paradoxical that an industry which epitomizes all that is new and up-to-date at the same time harbours some of the oldest and least desirable attributes of work in manufacturing industry.

It remains to be seen, for example whether China can continue to develop as a market economy while still retaining an authoritarian communist political system.

A striking feature of financial service activities during the past few decades is that the financial transactions essential to the operation of the 'real' economy has become increasingly dwarfed by speculative activity.

The primary driver of final consumer demand is, of course, the level of disposable income.