Unit 9: Global Competitiveness - Practice Quiz

1 What is export management?

2 Which document is commonly used to state the description, price, and quantity of exported goods?

3 What is the main role of an export manager?

4 What does indirect exporting involve?

5 Which payment method gives an exporter a bank's conditional promise of payment?

6 Why is market research important before entering an export market?

7 What is an export license?

8 How can technology improve a firm's global competitiveness?

9 What is technological innovation?

10 Which technology most directly supports real-time communication between international offices?

11 What is e-commerce?

12 What does research and development primarily help a company do?

13 What is one common result of automation in production?

14 What does a digital divide describe?

15 What does economic growth generally mean?

16 Which indicator is commonly used to measure a country's economic output?

17 What is sustainable development?

18 Which of the following is a renewable energy source?

19 Which gas is strongly associated with human-caused climate change?

20 What is the main purpose of recycling?

21 A small manufacturer wants to enter a foreign market quickly but has little knowledge of overseas distribution. Which entry approach is most suitable initially?

22 An exporter quotes a price under FOB terms. Which cost is normally the buyer's responsibility?

23 An exporter is concerned that a new overseas customer may not pay after receiving the goods. Which payment method offers the exporter the strongest protection?

24 A firm expects to receive €500,000 from an export sale in three months and fears that the euro may depreciate. What should it do to reduce this risk?

25 A food exporter receives repeated complaints because products arrive after their remaining shelf life has become too short. Which export decision should be reviewed first?

26 A company evaluates two export markets using expected annual profit. Market X offers revenue of $900,000 and total costs of $720,000. Market Y offers revenue of $800,000 and total costs of $590,000. Based only on expected profit, which market should it select?

27 A firm's product performs well domestically, but foreign sales remain weak because package sizes and labeling do not match local requirements. What is the best response?

28 A manufacturer introduces robotics and lowers its unit production cost below that of foreign competitors. Which source of competitive advantage has improved most directly?

29 A software company enters multiple foreign markets through a cloud platform rather than establishing physical branches. What is the main competitive benefit?

30 A firm transfers advanced production technology to a foreign joint venture but fears creating a future competitor. Which measure best protects its advantage?

31 Two global electronics firms can access similar hardware technology. One consistently launches better products because teams in different countries share knowledge effectively. Which capability explains its advantage?

32 A multinational installs the same digital production system in all its plants, but performance differs because some locations lack trained workers. What does this demonstrate?

33 A global retailer uses real-time sales data to adjust inventories across countries. Which outcome is most likely?

34 A country wants domestic firms to compete in high-technology industries over the long term. Which policy is most likely to build sustainable capability?

35 A government introduces a carbon tax equal to the estimated environmental damage caused by each unit of emissions. What is the main economic purpose?

36 A developing economy increases GDP by expanding coal-based manufacturing, but air pollution and health costs rise sharply. Which measure would best complement GDP when assessing welfare?

37 A multinational moves a highly polluting activity to a country with weak environmental rules mainly to reduce compliance costs. Which concept best describes this situation?

38 A country subsidizes renewable energy, and its domestic firms later become major exporters of solar equipment. Which relationship does this illustrate?

39 A country's GDP grows by 4% while its greenhouse gas emissions grow by 1% during the same year. What does this indicate?

40 Several countries share a river, but upstream factories discharge waste that harms downstream users. Why is international cooperation especially important?

41 A U.S. exporter is considering an order worth €1.2 million and can lock in a forward rate of $1.06 per euro. Incremental production and shipping costs are $900,000, while accepting the order sacrifices $70,000 of domestic contribution margin. The firm also allocates $180,000 of unavoidable headquarters overhead to the order. What is the order's incremental profit?

42 Under a CIF shipment governed by Incoterms 2020, cargo is damaged after loading aboard the vessel at the export port but before arrival. Which statement most accurately describes the allocation of risk and obligations?

43 An importing country finds that a foreign product is sold domestically below its normal value. Under WTO anti-dumping rules, which additional finding is necessary before a definitive anti-dumping duty may lawfully be imposed?

44 A manufacturer wants close control over final customer prices and market intelligence, but does not want to own local inventory. It is also concerned that a representative's authority to conclude contracts could create a taxable permanent establishment. Which arrangement best balances these objectives?

45 An exporter receives an irrevocable letter of credit issued by a bank in a country facing transfer restrictions. A reputable bank in the exporter's country adds its confirmation. Which risk remains most directly with the exporter?

46 An exporter charges substantially lower prices in Market X than in Market Y. Unauthorized traders begin buying in X and reselling in Y. Assuming products are legally genuine, which condition most strongly sustains this parallel-import opportunity?

47 A firm invoices exports in the buyer's currency. That currency depreciates by 10% against the exporter's currency, and the firm raises its buyer-currency price by 6% to offset the depreciation. Ignoring quantity changes, approximately what percentage of the original exporter-currency revenue per unit is retained?

48 A digital platform has strong cross-side network effects, but users can cheaply maintain accounts on competing platforms and suppliers use standardized interfaces. What is the most defensible competitive implication?

49 A patented technology is incorporated into an international interoperability standard under a FRAND commitment. After manufacturers make standard-specific investments, the patent owner demands sharply higher royalties. Which economic problem is most directly implicated?

50 A multinational installs advanced enterprise software across its subsidiaries, yet measured productivity initially falls before rising several years later. Which explanation best fits the productivity-paradox literature?

51 A late-industrializing economy lacks extensive fixed-line infrastructure but rapidly develops mobile payments, cloud services, and wireless broadband. Which mechanism best explains its ability to challenge established economies in selected sectors?

52 A product architecture changes from tightly integrated components to standardized modules with codified interfaces. Holding trade barriers constant, what is the most likely effect on global competition?

53 A country requires all customer data to be stored and processed domestically. Which outcome most accurately captures the policy's ambiguous effect on national competitiveness?

54 A producer has an 80% learning curve: each doubling of cumulative output reduces unit cost to 80% of its previous level. If unit cost is $125 at cumulative output of 10,000 units, what is the expected unit cost at 80,000 units?

55 Country A's GDP grows by 5% while its territorial carbon emissions grow by 2%. Which conclusion is justified from these figures alone?

56 A coalition imposes a domestic carbon price while major trading partners do not. It introduces a border carbon adjustment based on verified embedded emissions. What is the strongest economic rationale for the adjustment?

57 Energy-efficient air conditioners reduce the electricity needed per hour by 30%, but consumers respond by increasing usage hours by 20%. Assuming cooling performance per hour is unchanged, what is the approximate net change in electricity consumption?

58 Which observation would most directly undermine the claim that economic growth automatically produces environmental improvement through an environmental Kuznets curve?

59 A government credibly announces that a high carbon tax will begin in ten years but imposes no near-term extraction limits. Owners of exhaustible fossil-fuel reserves expect lower future demand. Which response illustrates the green paradox?

60 Country B reduces emissions per dollar of GDP by 4% annually, while real GDP grows by 6% annually. If these rates apply multiplicatively, what happens to total emissions after one year?