NY Times Business Articles

Recommended recent articles from the NY Times Business Section:

1. Chinese Auto Parts Enter the Global Market: "China’s auto parts exports have increased more than sixfold in the last five years, nearly topping $1 billion in April and emerging as one of the fastest-growing categories of Chinese industrial products sold overseas. More than half of these auto parts go to the United States; most of the rest to Europe and Japan.

The rise of Chinese auto parts exports is part of a much broader shift. China is moving up from basic goods like textiles, toys and shoes and toward higher-value industrial goods that pay better wages — but also compete more directly with products from countries like Mexico and even from advanced industrialized countries like the United States.

The combined wages of 20 workers here come to only $40,000 a year at the current exchange rate of 7.65 yuan to the dollar. That is in the range of annual base pay for one unionized auto parts worker in the United States and comparable to two nonunion American auto parts workers."

2. One City’s Home Sellers Do Better on Their Own, "The conclusion, in a study to be released today based on home-sales data from 1998 to 2004 in Madison, Wis., is that people in that city who sold their homes through real estate agents typically did not get a higher sale price than people who sold their homes themselves. When the agent’s commission is factored in, the for-sale-by-owner people came out ahead financially."

3. Rise in China’s Pork Prices Signals End to Cheap Output: "From pork spare ribs and mu shu pork to char siu bao — barbecued pork buns — pork is a staple of the Chinese diet. So in this Year of the Pig, an acute shortage of pork has been national news, as butchers raise prices almost daily and politicians scramble to respond.

Steep increases for pork loins and bacon are the most tangible sign that after a decade in which prices have fluctuated but not moved significantly upward, inflation is creeping back into China. In response to this pressure at home, Chinese companies are starting to raise prices for exports, removing what has been a brake on inflation in the West."