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The automobile industry is one of the sectors that has been most hit by the recession. Demand for cars has fallen sharply, accentuating the difficulties of excess production capacity already faced before the crisis and deepening the economic downturn in major car-producing countries.

This OECD report examines how closely the automobile and business cycles are related, how the automobile industry been affected by the crisis and the future prospects for car sales.

Click here to read the report in full.

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After years of dwindling logistics costs, the trend recently reversed. Across Europe, costs have risen by almost 20 percent since 2003, an increase expected to continue through at least 2013. And amid a global economic recession, more companies are searching for ways to optimize their supply chains to meet the ongoing challenges.

The sixth Excellence in Logistics study, published by A.T. Kearney and the European Logistics Association (ELA), summarizes today’s challenges and outlines five leading trends in supply chain management.

The full report is available from the A.T. Kearney’s website.

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The automation industry saw its strongest period of sustained growth from 2004 to 2007, with business expanding at around 9 percent per year. The financial crisis, however, brought this boom to a juddering halt. The ensuing slump has been massive: the market has shrunk by around 18 percent since 2007. Further, the industry can at best expect to grow by 1.5 percent per year until 2015. These are the findings of the global study on automation sector trends conducted by Roland Berger Strategy Consultants.

The study concludes that established markets like Germany, the US and Japan are crawling along with low single-digit growth, while China continues to surge ahead at around 8 percent per year. Indeed, China has replaced the US as the world’s largest national market for automation. In terms of global demand, the growth drivers for automation now include the energy sector, along with oil and gas.

While the market for process automation is expected to return to 2007 levels by 2012, the experts at Roland Berger don’t expect the production automation segment to recover until 2014.

The report is available to download from the Roland Berger Strategy Consultants website.

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The UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has just launched the report, “The Social Panorama of Latin America 2009.” The study links trends in poverty and income distribution with social protection systems, placing special emphasis on how these systems have responded to the social impacts of the current crisis and on medium- and long-term projections. It focuses in particular on the impact of public transfers, trends in social spending, the mechanisms by which social vulnerability is reproduced and changing intergenerational and gender relations.

Read the report on the web.

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Global asset managers, reeling from declining asset pools and client attrition, must take bold steps to strengthen their businesses if they hope to weather the current financial crisis and gain competitive advantage for the post-crisis era, according to this report by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

This latest report is the seventh annual study of the global asset-management industry and it draws on detailed benchmarking of leading competitors. The report also includes a comprehensive market-sizing study covering 32 countries (representing more than 95 percent of the global asset-management market), as well as a detailed analysis of the forces that are shaping the fortunes of the industry worldwide.

The full report is available from the Boston Consulting Group website.