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Briefly identifies the different Conventions and Recommendations of the International Labour Organization pertaining to national wage policy matters. Introduces some of the issues which need study when considering the social and economic effects of minimum wages, outlining the different roles that minimum wage fixing seeks to achieve. Concludes by considering some of the broader issues relating to labour standards, low pay and competitiveness. Argues that, in a market environment where competition is based increasingly on process and product development, a low‐pay strategy concentrating on the price of labour – and not on research and development and product design and quality – will be deficient. Suggests that economic innovation and dynamism cannot be derived from making labour cheaper, but by rendering it more productive, and that, to achieve this, a national general minimum floor to wages and other terms and conditions of employment are necessary.

The conventional and new inflation bias theories present two distinct facets to explain the outcome of excess inflation without output gains by a discretionary central banker. First is the temptation to achieve a higher than potential output, and, second is not to let it falter. The authors explicitly account for these two distinct dimensions in empirical formulations both exogenously and endogenously. Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to investigate what monetary discretion can and cannot do in terms of dual objectives – inflation and growth – across boom and bust cycles, both directly and indirectly.

(i) Segregate the economic activity into boom and bust cycles; (ii) Explicitly account for the two dimensions of conventional and new inflation bias theories; and (iii) model and estimate the direct and indirect effects of monetary discretion across business cycles.

The results indicate considerable asymmetries in the effects of monetary discretion and distribution thereof across objectives and cycles. The direct impact of monetary discretion tends to induce significantly higher inflation in boom and bust cycles, while it exerts a positive but insignificant effect on output. The inflation effects are more pronounced in boom than bust cycles and vice versa are the output effects. The indirect effects on output via inflation are significantly pernicious, which are more pronounced in expansions than recessions.

In a nutshell, instead of benefiting, monetary discretion tends to harm in terms of both the dual policy objectives, which cautions about its well calculated and constrained use only.

Marketing.

The case can be used in final year undergraduate and graduate level marketing courses in Services Marketing, Marketing Management and Brand Management.

Meg Lyons, the Vice President of AIESEC Pakistan's Talent Management and Local Committee Development, has relaunched the Experience Pakistan – a brand designed to develop a positive identity for Pakistan in the AIESEC world in order to have positive growth in the absolute exchange numbers for AIESEC Pakistan. AIESEC's philosophy is to nurture youth and develop them as leaders; all leadership positions in AIESEC are therefore held by individuals for only a year. This being the biggest and an unavoidable problem, Meg has to come up with a way of further developing and strengthening the Experience Pakistan brand.

The case requires the students to suggest a viable action plan for positioning Experience Pakistan and devising the implementation strategy.

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