Asia University (AU) and Economic Daily News held a Nobel Forum on Oct. 21, and invited a 2010 Nobel Prize winner in Economics, Dr. Dale T. Mortensen, to give a speech about “the returns to resource reallocation in developing and developed countries.” Dr. Mortensen said that the resources should be reallocated in some companies, and good resources should be controlled by good companies. Companies with excellent performances should be supported by the government, so that resources will not be wasted.

Dr. Mortensen emphasized that differences in productivity are influenced by special technologies, management capabilities, and labor qualities. He also said that it is worth to observe the impact of Apple's operations after the Apple founder, Steve Jobs’ s death. In addition, he took Bill Gates as an example to show the importance of a business leader’s insight to the development of a company.

Dr. Mortensen drew conclusions about the relationships between labor and productivity by using different theories and data charts. He stressed that it is positive to improve productivity with enough equipment and costs, but it still needs the government’s involvement and guidance to keep good companies working. In this way good workers will go to good companies and businesses will not waste resources. And in turn, the company will continue to yield higher productivity. Of course, it is not good for workers to change jobs too often, but it is a positive development for good workers to transfer to good companies.

After Dr. Mortensen’s speech, the organizers held the forum for participants to talk with him. The panelists are Academia Sinica Fellow, Dr. Chung-Laung Liu, AU President, Dr. Jeffrey J. P. Tsai, the Deputy Mayor of Taichung City, Dr. Pin-Kung Tsai, the Vice President of Delta Inc., Rong-Teng Tsai, the Vice President of Giant Co., Xiu-Zhen Du, and a Professor from the Department of Economics at National Central University, Li-Xuan Huang. They discussed the issue of regional integration across the workforce.

     Deputy Mayor Tsai said that this is an era of globalization and there are no boundaries between people’s international interactions, and that the issue about how to improve quality of labors is discussed all over the world. He also pointed out some problems that local governments faced, including care policy changes for foreign workers, white-collar workers in disguise of people with foreign titles, and foreign workers going missing. He thought that the government’s promotion of working holidays is a suitable beginning for increasing international exchanges of visitors. Another panelist, Prof. Huang, pointed out that it is hard to find jobs and also easy to lose jobs in Taiwan, and that the highest unemployment rate comes from young people with the ages of 15-24 who take about five months to get jobs.
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AU President Tsai talked about the government policies for foreign workers, the living environment for foreign students, and the resolutions to the problem of high unemployment. The Vice President of Giant, Xiu-Zhen Du, and the Vice President of Delta, Rong-Teng Tsai, also shared their experiences about the re-configuration of resources and manpower.

     Dr. Mortensen concluded that the core problem is “resource reallocation.” He said that labor migrating can help all countries to gain high GMPs, but there are still lots of regulations restricting labor migration, mainly due to intensive international competitions. “Because of the prevalence of nationalism, each country is afraid that her local workers will be replaced by foreign workers, and so tries to protect her people by lots of regulations, and this leads to big political issues,” said Dr. Mortensen finally. 

The participants in the forum learned a lot from the Nobel Laureate and panelists. The forum was a success indeed!