Costs involved in implementing manufacturing flexibility to meet customer demand are more important in the SMEs, especially that are labor intensive for example metalcasting companies, when located in a high cost country like Norway.
Telephone companies in high-cost countries can thus earn hard currency from settlement payments.
But it is locked into an overregulated EU run by sluggish or high-cost countries, with strong large-company lobbies.
Market forces tend to cause prices to rise faster in lower-cost countries, such as Spain or Ireland, than in high-cost countries, such as Germany.
If you seek to grasp the intricacies of multinational life – run companies in high-cost countries, pay taxes in mini-statelets that don't trouble HMRC – then, again, the basic formulas are all on display.
Waterford Wedgwood, which employs 8,000 people worldwide, declined to specify where it planned to cut the other 910 jobs, but said it would consider "manufacturing, administration, warehousing, distribution and other operations in high-cost countries".
The introduction of a single currency causes prices in different countries to converge: inflation is likely to be higher in fast-growing, low-cost countries, such as Spain and Ireland, than in slow-growing, high-cost countries, such as Germany (see article).
Often, the more a firm offshores and outsources, the worse it will be at responding to customers quickly.Ideas factoryOver the past few decades it became conventional wisdom that factory jobs could be done cheaply in some far-flung corner of the world but more important innovation work should stay in-house in high-cost countries.
It took many years of very low wage growth and rising productivity before Germany regained its edge on costs.That route to redemption has become even harder for today's high-cost countries because there is little consumer-price inflation around to erode real wages and rebuild profit margins.
This term refers to companies that manufacture or assemble in low-cost countries and distribute in high-cost countries.
