Collaboratory applications diminish the barriers of time and space that have long hampered joint work with scholars at other institutions across the globe. This technology holds the promise to make the activities of consortium members more efficient and productive, allowing them to work easily together even at great distances. Collaboratory groupware will be available in the UC Davis Web site to support access to a common set of tools for consortium members. These tools will include data and text management applications, online whiteboards, chat boxes, video teleconferencing capabilities, and the like. With these tools in place, consortium members will be able to undertake a number of joint research projects.
Current plans call for several joint projects to be conducted by the consortium.
These projects will be organized around the central theme of Local Economies in an Age of Global Capitalism. The most important research focus of the consortium will be the examination of the interface between the organization of local economies and the organization of the global economy in each of the countries in Asia. We hope the consortium will develop systematic ways to compare and analyze the local economies of the region. The principal research questions concern the integration or lack of integration of these business networks in the local and global economies, the financial structure that supports these networks, the comparative advantages or disadvantages of the groups. The consortium will also develop a way to specify the linkages of each local economy to the global economy.