Assignment:
Building Effective Technical Skills
Technical skills are necessary to understand or perform the specific kind of work that an organization does. At some companies, the work involves analyzing data in order to develop effective international strategies. This exercise will help you develop certain technical skills related to the tasks of collecting information and determining its possible effects on a firm’s activities.
As of 2002, the five largest countries in the world, in terms of population, were China, India, the United States, Indonesia, and Brazil. As the manager of a large U.S.-based multinational firm, you need some information about trade and population in each of these countries. You can isolate the information that you need by reviewing the six items that constitute the Exercise Task below. Here are a few helpful hints for using the Internet to find the information that you need. You can get import/export data from the U.S. Census Bureau and, working from this main page, locate the most recent figures. You can also get estimates of future population from the Census Bureau. You can gather the rest of the data you need from the World Factbook, which is published by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
Q1. List the five countries in the world projected to have the largest populations in 2050. Explain how the list will have changed since 2002.
Q2. List the five countries that currently export the most products to the United States.
Q3. List the five countries that currently import the most products from the United States.
Q4. Life span is a measure of individual prosperity in a country. What is the average life span in each of the five largest countries in the world? In each of the five largest exporters to the United States? In each of the five largest importers from the United States?
Q5. Gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is a measure of a country’s economic health. What is the GDP per capita, in U.S. dollars, of each of the world’s five largest countries? Of each of the five largest exporters to the United States? Of each of the five largest importers from the United States?
Q6. What are the implications for your firm? What, for example, do the data suggest about the desirability of various countries as current trading partners? What do the data suggest about the desirability of the same countries as future trading partners?
Your answer must be typed, double-spaced, Times New Roman font (size 12), one-inch margins on all sides, APA format and also include references.