Role-playing game Giovanni Marin Department of Economics, Society, - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Role-playing game

Giovanni Marin Department of Economics, Society, Politics Università degli Studi di Urbino ‘Carlo Bo’

Disclaimer: this is an ‘experiment’ (and you are my ‘guinea-pigs’)

Spring 2017 Global Political Economy 2

Aim of the role-playing game

• Demonstrate your understanding of the

economic mechanisms behind economic globalization

• Evaluate the possible implications of

globalization on different ‘interest groups’

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Structure of the game

• In the first place, I will present you a real ‘case’ of

globalization by means of material retrieved on newspapers and magazines

• Then, the class will be split in six groups, each

representing an ‘interest group’

• Each group has to evaluate the case in the following

dimensions

– Why the ‘globalization event’ occurred – Which are the implications for your interest group – General judgement of the event

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Structure of the game

• Each group needs to draft a short press

release to summarize their position about the ‘globalization event’ and present it to the

• ther groups (2-3 minutes for each group)
• After the first round of press releases, each

group will comment on other groups’ positions (2-3 minutes for each group)

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Create the six groups!

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Interest groups

• A. Management in the headquater of the

multinational firm

• B. Central government (of the host country)
• C. Local government (of the host region)
• D. Trade unions (of the host country)
• E. Employers’ federation (of the host country)
• F. Trade unions (of the home country)

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8

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ge-italy-idUSKCN0V90XX

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GE in Italy

• GE is present in Italy since 1912
• The Italian GE branch ‘Nuovo Pignone’, near Florence, was acquired

from ENI (the Italian oil company founded by Enrico Mattei after WWII) in 1993

– Privatization of ENI – At the time, commentors were worried for the possibility that GE just wanted to ‘destroy’ its Italian competitor in the development and production of machinery for the Oil&Gas sector – Other commentors were just worried that ENI was underselling one of its strategic assets

• Now, Nuovo Pignone is the world ‘headquarter’ of GE for the

division ‘Oil&Gas’  this is the only case of non-US headquarter for GE divisions

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• A. Management in the headquarter of

GE

• Describe the objective of the investment and

the short and medium term expectations about the development of the business

• Explain why GE decided to increase its

presence in Italy and why exactly in the Oil&Gas sector

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• B. Central government (Italy)
• Motivate why the government invested as

much as 200mln euro on this private project

• Explain why this investment is going to bring

substantial net benefit for Italy as a whole

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• C. Local government (Region Toscana)
• Discuss which are the reasons why GE choose

Toscana as the destination of the investment

• Discuss the expected gains from the

investment for the local economy

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• D. Trade unions (in Italy)
• Discuss which are the expected gains for

Italian workers (and which types of workers)

• Identify the possible risks of this investment

(hint: competition with ‘100% Italian’ companies that would re-invest their profits in Italy)

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• E. Employers’ federation in Italy
• Discuss which are the opportunities for Italian

firms coming from this FDI

• Motivate a critique to the central and local

governments for investing taxpayers’ money for facilitating investments of non-Italian companies

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• F. Trade unions (in the US)
• Motivate a critique to GE for not investing in

the home country and to the US government for not offering the same conditions as the Italian government

• Try to find some positive returns for US

workers from the GE’s investment in Italy

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